


Inexhaustible Light

by runandgo



Series: if you can’t have original unholyverse, store-bought is fine [1]
Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Dreams and Nightmares, F/F, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Joan of Arc imagery, M/M, Pining, Prophetic Dreams, Religion, Religious Conflict, Religious Content, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, True Love, Unholyverse, basically any religion tag okay it's unholyverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:00:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23926531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runandgo/pseuds/runandgo
Summary: “Look, I know you like the guy.” Frank raised his hands. “I get it. But you of all people should know not to trust someone just because they’re wearing a collar.”Five personal grooming experts and their priest travel to France for a special case and get a little more than they bargained for. Set during the one-year break at the end ofI Have Been All Things Unholy.
Relationships: Frank Iero/Gerard Way, Lindsey Byrnes/Hayley Williams
Series: if you can’t have original unholyverse, store-bought is fine [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1730128
Comments: 72
Kudos: 138
Collections: последние слова иисуса vol.2





	Inexhaustible Light

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [I Have Been All Things Unholy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/231221) by [Bexless](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bexless/pseuds/Bexless). 



> i've been obsessed with unholyverse ever since i read it, and quarantine gave me the ability to write... this, aka the longest fic i've ever written. i'm going to sleep for a month now, i hope you all enjoy it. i'm aware that i'm great value to bexless's name brand, and i hope i don't besmirch the unholyverse name too badly, but i just really, really adore that fic. (also, this really won't make much sense if you've never read at least volume i, and also, if you haven't, you are on crack. so go read that.) this is technically an au of an au, since they don't leave the us or go back to jersey until the third volume in uhv canon, but other than that i've stuck as close to everything as is humanly possible.
> 
> many, many, MANY thanks go out to my wonderful beta throwupsparkles (on [tumblr](https://throwupsparkles.tumblr.com) and [ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/throwupsparkles)) who read this whole monstrosity, offered some really excellent advice, let me pick her brain, and put up with me talking about it and uhv in general all the time. liz, you're an absolute angel, and i owe you one for life. <3 i also owe a huge thank you to [frankierogothdad](http://frankierogothdad.tumblr.com) for doing a final read-through by fresh eyes, and making sure everything worked as well as i could possibly hope. *pours one out in your honor*
> 
> there are some things liz and dany couldn't be expected to catch, and nearly all of them will be factual errors either in the unholyverse universe or regarding catholicism. i was not raised catholic, so i had to do a LOT of research for this fic; my apologies if i got anything glaringly or offensively wrong! you can find some of my sources in the end notes, if you're interested, and i'd love to discuss any of that as well. (i am thinking i possibly should have been a religious studies major.)
> 
> i haven't had to write a disclaimer like this in a while, but PLEASE do not put this anywhere where people mentioned in this might see it, tyvm.
> 
> hope you enjoy! references for important stuff in the fic can be found in the end notes.

_We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight._ -2 Corinthians 5:6-7

* * *

_”Paris!”_ Frank thumped the headrest behind him so violently that it let out a puff of dust. “For real?”

Gerard nodded, a small movement, but the grin he was trying to contain said he was more excited than he was letting on. “Yes.” 

From his position in shotgun, Brian turned and scrutinized them both. “We don’t have plane ticket money, Father.” 

“Well…” Sighing, Gerard palmed his chin, in a gesture that he was aware made him look like the priests that exceeded him in years and seriousness. “I guess if it’s important enough, the Vatican can pull that kind of stuff out. Look, I’ve been asking! I’ve been asking,” he said, holding his hands up in a placating expression that was becoming entirely too familiar as Brian opened his mouth indignantly. He really had, every time he was on the phone, so often that the Cardinal could tell what he was going to say and had started letting out a sigh that was not exactly full of the peace that passeth all understanding, in Gerard’s humble opinion. “But they make the decisions, I’m just along for the ride, and dragging all of you with me.” 

“Isn’t that the Gospel truth,” Brian muttered, cutting his eyes at the phone in Gerard’s hand before sinking a little lower in the seat, his way of acquiescing — he wasn’t happy about it, but he wasn’t gonna look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Clearing his throat, Gerard went on. “So anyway. We’re getting on a plane tomorrow.” 

“A plane?” Bob said, twisting over his shoulder in the driver’s seat. 

The little voice inside Gerard, the one that was him without the priest filter, said _Oh my God, stop repeating everything I say,_ but Gerard pushed it aside and instead said, “Yeah. They’ll put us up, it won’t be nice but we’ll have a room in a hostel.” 

Frank moaned and flopped back, and Gerard tried to ignore the thoughts that sound conjured in his brain. He ended up more making a strangled noise that he barely managed to cover with a cough. “You had me at a room, dude, I don’t care if it’s in the fucking whorehouse.” 

“Does that make you the whore or the john?” Bob laughed, and Frank looked so happy that he didn’t even flip him off. 

“Where are we flying out of?” Mikey asked, glancing up from his Sidekick, the light from his screen glinting in his dirty glasses. 

“That’s the best part,” Gerard smiled. He’d been holding on to this, saving it like he sometimes did the last few beads of the rosary, because it was so rare that he got to deliver good news, it was mostly just more assignments and a lack of money. “We’re flying out of Newark.” 

There was a stunned silence, and then Frank whooped so loud Ray covered his ears. “Fuck, dude, do you have a volume control button?” 

“You know I don’t,” Frank said happily. “Jesus Christ —“ Gerard winced, he couldn’t help it, and he watched Frank roll his eyes before continuing — “I miss my mom, dude.” 

“Yeah,” Ray agreed, fervent. “I miss Jersey pizza.” 

Bob grumbled something about deep dish, and Mikey kicked him in the back of his seat. “I miss Mom, too,” he said, cocked an eyebrow at Gerard. _Does she know we’re coming?_

In response, Gerard quirked the corners of his mouth, almost a smile. _Of course she does._

That got him a real smile, and it opened his chest up a little. “If we drive hard today, we can get there tonight, probably.” It was about 5 in the afternoon, and they were parked in a boiling hot truck stop in the swampy bellows of Virginia. 

“‘If we drive hard,’” Bob scoffed, even as he turned the key in the ignition and coaxed the van to life. “Like you drive.” 

“Hey,” Ray said mildly, settling back against the fabric and tipping his head back. Gerard knew he would probably sleep most of the way, maybe switch out if Bob and Brian both got burned out. 

“You don’t want him to,” Mikey said, tucking a knee under himself, the same way he always sat when he and Gerard were kids. “Trust me. He made me puke on the way to prom.” 

“You had food poisoning,” Gerard defended himself, and it was true; Mikey had been green all day, something about the cookies he’d tried to make, but he’d insisted on going anyway. He’d been on the planning committee. The theme wasn’t stupid, for once, it was Night in New York, and Mikey had been staying after school cutting out decorations for weeks… For a second, he ached somewhere inside himself for those days, so deeply it was surprising. He’d missed so much in the past few years, and while he’d signed up for it, it still hurt to think of all the parts of Mikey’s life he hadn’t gotten to see. 

With a sudden blink, he came back to himself, and the van was moving. Frank’s thigh was pressing against his, in a way that normally would have jolted Gerard out of any other thoughts. He knew he should move, but he didn’t. _Sin is not a pure, or entire privation of all moral good,_ he thought, and then he was asleep before he could think anything else. 

It was a while later that he woke up in the dark, his mouth thick, his head muzzy and kind of sick, his hand inside his jacket clutching his rosary even though he didn’t remember reaching for it. He panicked a little like he always did when he woke up in a car, but then he looked around, saw the streetlights reflecting on Mikey’s greasy hair, heard the tinny music coming out of Frank’s headphones, and felt a little better. Almost compulsively, Gerard checked Frank’s wrists, his forehead, and even though he hadn’t bled since the day they saved him from Luke, it sent a bolt of relief through him to just see the circular scars, silvery against the skin and amidst the tattoos but as healed-up as they’d ever been. 

Frank’s head whipped around like he could feel Gerard’s eyes on him, physically feel them like a touch, and he cracked an eye open. “Take a picture, or I guess, take some more pictures, they’ll last longer.” He sounded grumpy, but he said it quiet, not trying to wake up the others. 

Gerard felt his face go red, not like he could do anything to stop it. “Sorry. I just keep having to check.” It had been five months, but still. “I think I’ll probably always keep having to check.” 

Frank turned away to face out the window, and Gerard thought for a second that he hadn’t heard him over the roaring of the music in his ears, or that maybe he just wasn’t going to respond. Then, he said, still under his breath enough, “Me too.” 

Gerard opened his mouth and closed it again. This never really used to happen before Frank; he never ran out of words. They were like a well running deep inside him, and he could reach down in it and talk about anything. With Frank, sometimes, with certain subjects, it was like the whole fucking bucket broke off and just got lost somewhere inside him. 

He looked over his shoulder and saw Mikey sleeping against the wall like a little kid, his mouth open, his hair rubbing up on the fabric and getting all staticky. His hand was still wrapped tight around his phone; he never put it down, even though he hadn’t been a receptionist for a while now. Again, Gerard felt that weird, sudden sadness. It was almost painful in its intensity, like a solar flare in his brain, eclipsing all other emotions. Not like grief, not like he’d felt when his grandma died. That was a flat, dull, throbbing feeling, like waves washing over him as he laid hopeless on the shore. This was something else. 

Then as quickly as it came, it was gone. Gerard breathed deep a few times, felt the feeling leave his lungs, his veins, then settled back against the seat. He was still holding his rosary, and they weren’t in Jersey yet, so he started to pray, crossing himself and not looking over even though the rustling of clothes told him Frank was staring. He didn’t make any sound, just his lips moving and air rushing over them. It was comforting to hold the beads as they slid through his fingers the same way they did when he was a kid and he’d pray with his grandmother. The same way every time, no matter how he was feeling. His eyelids slid shut, and he lost himself in the ritual of it. Prayer, move, mystery, move, and so on. The world faded away till there was nothing else, not the rocking of the van, not the shuttering light of the streetlights through the windows. Some part of him was grateful that Frank had shifted and their legs weren’t pressed together anymore, but even that niggling little thought went quiet by the time Gerard said the first Glory Be. 

He spoke the last “Amen” aloud, though quietly, and crossed himself again. When he opened his eyes, Frank was still staring at him. “Now who needs to take a picture, hm?” Gerard said, not unkindly, and made to tuck the rosary back inside his shirt, but before he could, Frank cleared his throat and held out his hand. 

“Can I — um, can I borrow that?” 

Immediately, Gerard handed it over. Maybe Frank didn’t believe in God, okay, Gerard could get that. He’d been there. Even after basically _channeling the Passion,_ Gerard could get that. (Maybe some of him was still a little incredulous.) But at least they could connect over this. Ever since Frank had gotten saved, had spoken some of the Last Words, he’d had this thing for Mary. Gerard had to be really careful about bringing it up because Frank always thought Gerard was trying to convert him, which he wasn’t. Gerard really, _really_ was not the type to proselytize to anyone against their will. He was just interested. He didn’t know anything that Frank loved as much as Gerard loved God, except maybe piercing, and Gerard couldn’t talk about that without feeling like he was going to hurl. But he wanted (yes, selfishly, he knew, _he fucking knew_ ), to see Frank’s face light up. Or if not light up, then at least go all still and quiet, almost holy, practically an icon in and of itself. 

Frank took the rosary from Gerard and was careful not to let their fingers brush, which Gerard was both grateful and sorry for. He leaned back in his seat and looped it around his hand, running his fingers over the beads. They turned off the highway and everything was thrown into shadow, so Gerard couldn’t see anymore, but he could hear the clicking as the rosary passed through Frank’s fingers. He wasn’t praying, Gerard knew that much — even if for some reason he had liked the routine or whatever, he always went way too fast to be saying anything. But it seemed to help, to think of Mary or at least provide some kind of soothing touch, and now that Gerard apparently didn’t have morphine skin that could make Frank feel better, he could use some help every so often. 

It wasn’t too long before they were turning down ever-more familiar streets. They dropped Ray off first, then Frank, who untangled the rosary from around his wrist and looped it gently over Gerard’s head before hopping out of the van. Bob was going to stay with Brian, so he stayed in the car as Mikey leaned forward and started giving directions to their house. 

When they turned into the driveway, Gerard actually teared up. This wasn’t the same sadness he’d felt earlier, this was just a want so intense it knocked the breath out of him. He hadn’t been home since Christmas two years ago, maybe. He missed the pictures on the walls, dusty except for the fingerprints where his mom touched them. He missed the gross carpeting they’d never gotten redone. He missed the smell of smoke, the novelty ashtrays, he missed his _parents,_ and when they finally pulled in the driveway it was all he could do to not launch himself out of the van at full speed and rocket into the living room and shove his face in his mom’s apron like a five-year-old. 

He and Mikey exited the van with some difficulty, lugging bags of rancid laundry, but they dropped them on the step as soon as their mom opened the door and drew them both into her arms. It felt so good, a love that was for once so fucking uncomplicated. “My boys,” she sighed, a hand on the back of each of their heads even though they both towered over her. “It’s okay.” Gerard hadn’t even realized he’d fully started crying until she said that, and it only made him shake harder. 

Eventually they managed to break apart and move inside, where they repeated nearly the exact same scene with their father, and then finally they all sat down around the coffee table and lit up cigarettes in unison. Mikey didn’t really smoke, Gerard knew, but he took one of the cigarettes their mom offered because it smelled like home and they both wanted to submerge themselves in it. “How are you? Gerard, you look so tired, and Mikey, you’re just too skinny,” their mom said, tapping ash off the end of her cig. She’d been saying the same thing since they moved out and she’d probably never stop. 

Gerard smiled, because he was tired, but he was also happy. “I’m good, Mom, I promise.” 

“Me too,” Mikey said. 

She looked between them, raising her eyebrows. “Well? Are you going to tell me anything?” 

Gerard sighed. “You know I can’t.” It really did suck, keeping stuff from his mom. He’d never been the secretive type until he started drinking and doing drugs, and he knew it still kind of set her on edge, even though obviously Church-sanctioned Official Business was a different story than cocaine until he couldn’t see straight. “But we’re helping people. Really, we are." 

Her head swung around to Mikey, who nodded. “I haven’t seen him like this since he stopped working with the kids.” 

That seemed to pacify her, and she took a long drag from her cigarette before using it to gesture to Mikey. “There’s some leftover ziti in the fridge, sweetheart, I’d just feel better if you’d have it.” 

Their dad snorted on the couch next to her, and she turned to him and whacked his thigh. “And what do you have to say, huh?” 

He shrugged. “Mikey could eat all the ziti in the world and he’d look the same. You know that same as I do.” 

Gerard kind of zoned out after that. He was just so happy to be back with everyone, the same familiar bickering banter filling his ears. He dropped this filter of his cigarette in the ashtray, then yawned so loud his ears popped. 

Immediately, his mom stood up and took them both by the shoulder. “Bed. Come on.” 

For probably the only time she’d done it, neither of them argued, just let her lead them back through the house. Mikey disappeared into his room at the top of the stairs with a quick hug to their dad, a kiss on the cheek for their mom, and a nod to Gerard. The door to the basement was next, and Gerard opened it, going through the same rituals as Mikey before walking down the stairs and sitting down on his bed. His mom had made it up with his Star Wars sheets, and it made him smile. 

Showering felt fucking _amazing._ Gerard’s legs almost buckled when hot water hit his back. It took an embarrassingly long time for his hair to actually get wet because it was so full of grease and dry shampoo, but when he got shampoo in there he could feel himself getting cleaner, and it was heavenly. “Thank You, God, for running water,” he sighed, and leaned against the tile. 

He spent as long as he could in the shower, until Frank floated into his mind’s eye and he had to get out. The towels were clean and there were pajamas on the bed and Gerard could hear the rhythmic thumping of the washing machine upstairs. He climbed into bed, and before he could even rifle through his drawers to look for his favorite pens from college, he was asleep. 

The dream was soft coming on, gentle like slipping into a warm bath. Gerard was at his old church, sitting behind the desk in his office, vestments on. A young girl was sitting in front of him, and she was crying, which wasn’t entirely unusual. She couldn’t have been more than 17, her face round and pale, hair cut short in a bob near her chin. 

Gerard blinked a few times, then leaned across the desk, out of his chair. “What’s wrong?” he asked. 

She shook her head. More tears splashed down her face, huge, leaving splotches and wetting her cheeks. “I’m so scared, Father.” 

“You don’t have to be scared.” Gerard shook his head. Even though she was sad, the girl’s face looked so peaceful to him. How could she be scared? “I can help you, I promise. Tell me what I can do. I can listen.” 

“There’s nothing you can do for me,” she sobbed, and opened her coat, and Gerard reared back instinctively because it couldn’t be right. There was a flame, an ember shimmering in the middle of her chest, and as he watched it caught fire and enveloped her. Melting skin, searing flesh, the _smell_ was unbelievable, he could practically see her ribs smoldering underneath, and he suddenly had no water and the air was sucking and dry, and then Gerard woke up with a shuddering gasp, clutching the sheets that had gone sweaty and damp in his hands. Morning was just breaking. 

He rolled over and into a kneel on the floor, crossed himself, and started praying before he was even fully aware. Beneath his knees he could barely feel the hard press of the floor; all it was was shaking hands, flashes in his mind of the flames licking the ceiling, and then those turned into Frank bleeding from the forehead and wrists and feet, and then his lips stumbled over the Hail Mary, _the Hail Fucking Mary_ , and he reached onto the nightstand for his cell phone and called Frank before the rational part of his brain could wake up. 

“‘Lo?” came the reply, gravelly with sleep, low and delicious, and Gerard’s stomach dropped to somewhere around his knees. 

“Frankie,” Gerard said, embarrassed with the intensity that came out even though he didn’t mean it to. 

“Gee— Gerard?” There was a sound of shifting, probably Frank sitting up in bed. “Fuck, it’s 5:30 in the fucking morning. What’s wrong? I’m having the best sleep of the past year.” 

“Really?” Gerard turned so he was sitting, half on his butt, half on his hip, legs bent to the side; his knees were starting to ache. “That’s good! No nightmares? Nothing about — about Luke, or anything?” 

“No. Not tonight. Dude, did you call me and _wake me up_ to ask me about my nightmares?” Frank asked, his voice slowly returning to its natural timbre. “That seems kind of stupid.” 

“I — no, no, that’s not why I called you.” 

“Okay, then why did you? I could hear you going into Priest Mode, doing that thing where you like lean forward in your chair all earnest and shit.” 

Frowning, Gerard let himself settle with his back against the bed. He had been leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “Maybe you didn’t have a nightmare, but I did.” 

“Oh, shit,” Frank said, and Gerard could imagine him rubbing the bridge of his nose. “You finally get to sleep and then _you_ have the fucking nightmare.” 

Gerard laughed, even though it wasn’t funny, a dry _ha_ that was more of a statement. “Yeah. I know.” 

“What was it about?” 

“No, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.” Gerard shook his head and went on despite the noise of protest Frank made. “I just wanted to make sure, you know, you were okay.” 

The phone crackled a little; Gerard could hear a soft rustling in the silence that followed, and as stupid as it was, he waited with bated breath for Frank’s response. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” He was talking softly, and Gerard knew it was from sympathy-pity, but it was so sweet anyway that he wanted to stay on the phone forever. “No problems.” 

“Good,” Gerard sighed. “Okay.” 

And for a second they were just one breath together, connected by a phone line, opposite sides of the same town, and Gerard’s heart ached so badly, so profoundly, that he wanted to cry out. It was unfair, every little thing inside him was saying. It was so unfair that this perfect person was right in front of him and he couldn’t have everything he wanted. It was so unfair to have to choose between God and love, because God _was_ love. And Gerard had been praying about it for months, but he still couldn’t understand how this contradiction could exist. 

He was so lost in his own head, or maybe his heart, he kept mixing them up, that he didn’t even notice when Frank’s breath evened out into sleep. When Gerard finally snapped out of it, he stayed on the line, and kept the phone right next to his ear, the faraway sound of it lulling him back to his own sleep. If he couldn’t have the real thing... 

When he woke up, his face was all sweaty against his phone, and it smelled like pancakes wafting down from upstairs. The call had disconnected, whether it was Frank or him he didn’t know, and he couldn’t pretend any longer that he wasn’t alone. Which sucked for so many different reasons that it made his brain hurt to think about all of them. 

Gerard got dressed in one of the extra shirts he had hanging in his closet, threaded a new, clean collar in, and tramped up the stairs like he’d done ten million times until he turned twenty-five. 

Ten hours later, after collecting everyone and boarding the plane, they were in the air, watching Newark disappear from beneath them. Frank was on Gerard’s one side, Mikey on the other, and Frank had never been on a plane before so he was craning his neck to see out the window even though they were in the center of the plane. Gerard was wearing a scarf, because being a priest on planes meant that people would sometimes ask you to pray in the middle of the flight, or over turbulence or whatever, and being on a flight already made him so fucking nervous that if he had to pray any other way than inside his head, he’d probably swear or puke or both, but he was getting hot and loosened it a little. Not enough so the white would peek out. 

Mikey noticed, and turned to him. “You could have just worn a t-shirt.” 

Gerard shook his head. “No. They needed to see it, you know, verify the tickets and everything. Plus how do you think we got our luggage through customs, hm?” The truth was that people still expected a 60-year-old dude when they saw “Father Way, at the behest of the Vatican,” and it took a little bit more convincing that just flashing his collar for them to believe that this young dude with dyed-black hair was a priest, let alone the kind of priest that got plane tickets sent by order of the Pope. 

On his left, Frank was shuffling his way through the movies with clumsy touches on the screen. “Dude, they have Da Vinci Code,” he said to Mikey, leaning forward to talk over Gerard’s chest. 

Gerard rolled his eyes, he couldn’t help it, and the corner of Mikey’s mouth hitched up. “Gee hates that movie.” 

“I thought you were down with the whole power to the women in the church thing.” 

Gerard snorted. “There’s a difference between believing that women have an equal stance in the eyes of God, and that they’ve always been as important, if not more important, to the church as men have, and believing that the entirety of Western society is a lie made up by the Catholic Church to keep people from knowing that Jesus had kids.” 

“Wait, _did_ Jesus have kids?” Frank asked, open-mouthed, like he really thought Gerard would know. 

Gerard made a frustrated noise and clenched his hands into fists next to his head. “That’s not the point! It really doesn’t matter whether Jesus had kids. Even if He did, and we’ll probably never know, it wouldn’t be relevant because that bloodline would be so dispersed by now. And it’s not, it’s not the same kind of thing as like, being the King of England or some shit.” Sometimes when Gerard was talking to Frank, Frank would get this kind of weird spacey look on his face, and Gerard was pretty sure that it meant he wasn’t listening anymore. That was starting to happen, so he hurried on with his explanation. “But anyway. The problem isn’t the idea itself, I don’t care, go nuts. Like I said, there’s never really gonna be a way to know for sure. It’s that, not only the fact that this dude told everyone this was all true, even when it _definitely_ isn’t, and also, it’s not just the Church’s history they’re messing with, because let’s face it, we kind of deserve it at this point — it’s that it tried to rewrite all the stories behind these big wonderful works of art, the Mona Lisa, for crying out loud, _and_ that they made it seem like if you contradicted that bullshit, it was ‘cause you’re sexist." 

Frank was staring at him, a mix between dumbstruck and amused. “I think you set a new record for the longest sentence without breathing.” 

Ruefully, Gerard smiled. “Sorry. Just one of those things, you know? Catholic cultural touchstones in modern-day history and all.” Also, he was so nervous he could feel it in his neck, prickling like needles — _the wrong fucking thought to have right now_ — and it felt good to expend his energy into something other than shredding his cuticles to pieces. 

“Well,” Frank said, untangling his headphones from inside his carry-on and putting them in, “in that case, I think I’ll just watch Watchmen again.” 

“Who watches the Watchmen,” Mikey intoned flatly. 

Frank stifled a laugh. “Me, motherfucker, and you, like five times in theaters with me." 

Gerard closed his eyes, breathed in, breathed out, and reached inside his bag for the unicorn notebook he’d co-opted from Mikey. It was still pretty early, he’d try to sleep later, but for now he could go over their notes and try and prepare for whatever was awaiting them — it was maddeningly vague, as always, just a few reports of oddities and Paris was an extremely Catholic city, but there was something else there, there had to be. The priest he’d been talking to had been having members of his congregation report visions when alone in the church that seemed to follow them home and appear there too, which was fairly strange... 

When he looked up again, the movie was halfway over, and the sun was sinking under the clouds. His position in the middle of a metal tube floating thousands of feet in the air suddenly whooshed back to the front of his mind, so instead of letting it sit there and sink deep into his consciousness and paralyze him, Gerard flipped the notebook over and started drawing. It was fast, loose, messy, but it brought his heart rate down to do it, like the creativity was spreading from the tips of his fingers into his blood. 

At first he tried to draw some other people — the stewardess with her hip cocked against the drink cart, Mikey sleeping with his glasses dangerously close to the end of his nose, the older man who was reading a book that seriously rivaled the ones in Gerard’s luggage — but he found himself drawing Frank anyway. The planes of his face were so familiar by now that they flowed easily from his pencil, first the rough sketch, then more details. Eyes, nose, hair. Scars ribboning around his forehead. Lip piercing, nose piercing, clean-shaven for once. In profile with the light of the early sunset around his face… 

Drawing him was a way to put distance between them while getting closer than ever, an excuse to stare at Frank without needing to explain it away. A conduit for Gerard’s energy, which otherwise wanted to spill out in nervous words that danced entirely too close to saying what he was actually feeling. 

As he sharpened the lines of Frank’s eyelashes, he became aware of Mikey’s chin on his shoulder. “Hey.” 

“Frank’s not gonna like that,” Mikey murmured. 

“Well, he doesn’t have to see it,” Gerard said, hitching his shoulder up just a little more to his left, blocking Frank from his paper even though he wasn’t looking. “Anyway, why do you think he wouldn’t like it? Is — is it bad? Does it not look like him?” 

“Gee, come on, of course it’s not bad.” Mikey rolled his eyes and pulled back. “It’s because you got all that Jesus imagery. He doesn’t like that.” 

“It’s not _Jesus imagery,_ ” Gerard protested weakly. “It’s just a halo, and it’s only ‘cause, look at the light, Mikey.” 

There was a long silence, during which Mikey did that thing where he stared at Gerard like he did at his phone when he was trying to get someone to come in to the shop. There wasn’t a response out loud, just Mikey raising his eyebrows and tilting his head to the side. _What are you gonna do?_

Gerard grimaced and sighed through his nose. _What_ can _I do?_

That made Mikey nod, press his mouth into a tight, sad line. _Sorry._

It was pretty hard to figure out how to say _Shit’s not fair_ without opening his mouth, so instead Gerard just hunched closer to the paper and lost himself in the drawing. Having an excuse to think about nothing except for Frank’s face was pretty nice. 

The rest of the flight was okay — Gerard didn’t sleep, he was too anxious, but he drew some more, then talked about Watchmen with Frank and Mikey once it had finished playing, until they both fell asleep in the quiet midnight dark. The food was better than usual but the landing was awful. Gerard had thrown the dinner all up with Frank holding his hand in fear on one side and Mikey, who never minded planes, rubbing his back from the other. It burned his nose and brought tears to his eyes, his hand cramping from holding his rosary so tightly 

Everyone stumbled off the plane with green tinges to their faces and clothes wrinkled from sitting too long. Jelly-legged, Gerard made his way to the first water fountain he could see and rinsed his mouth out, tried to scrub the taste of puke off of his tongue. It wasn’t working too well. 

With a whistle, Frank leaned against the wall next to him and extended a piece of gum in its tiny foil wrapper. “You okay?” 

Gerard smiled wanly and took the gum. It wasn’t as good as brushing his teeth for real, but it was still better to have the artificial, too-sweet mint taste in his mouth. “Yeah.” 

“I gotta tell you, dude, you look like shit warmed over.” 

“I think the phrase is _hell_ warmed over,” Gerard said, splashed a little water on his face before standing up. 

“Yeah, but combining it makes it like, so much stronger.” Frank reached into his pocket and brought out his cigarettes, flipping the lid open and shut, open and shut. “Did you sleep at all?” 

“I usually don’t on planes, unless I take a shitload of Xanax,” Gerard sighed, and ran his hand through his hair. It came away damp with sweat. 

“Why don’t you, then?” 

“I don’t really have hours to sleep it off once I get to wherever I’m going.” He picked up his bag from where he’d dropped it on the linoleum floor. “And they don’t really like to write Xanax prescriptions for me unless it’s an emergency.” 

He’d never fully told Frank about his history, the drugs and the alcohol, because it was just so awkward, and it always felt to Gerard like he was acting like he was the only person on the planet to have a shitty tragic backstory. He wasn’t shy about talking about it when it came up, but it sucked to watch people blanch and stammer around what to say. 

Frank didn’t even blink, and he never had. “Shit, that _sucks,_ ” he said fervently, and it just knocked Gerard off-guard enough that he laughed. And the laugh came with a warm bloom in his chest, like his body knew it had been caused by Frank. Like his heart was in control instead of his brain. 

With a thumb over his shoulder, Frank gestured back to the other guys, standing a few feet away. “You ‘bout ready to go?” 

“Yeah,” Gerard sighed. From behind them, Mikey emerged out of the bathroom, shaking water off his hands and desperately trying not to make a face at either of them; wincing, Gerard tugged on his collar and widened his eyes the slightest degree. _Mikey, please don’t._

A flick of hair out of his eyes, a slow blink. _I wasn’t._

There was lately always an edge of panic to Gerard’s thoughts when he was around Frank. It made him paranoid as hell, and he hated it, because it was so fucking obvious in his mind. He must be shining his stupid, ill-advised, unignorable crush out of every hole in his head. Like a light he couldn’t extinguish, a fire he couldn’t put out, trailing a traitorous line of smoke high into the sky for everyone to see. He didn’t like to feel like he was on eggshells, at least not like this. He had gotten used to a certain amount of it, the whole priest thing (if there was a better phrase to sum up Gerard’s life he had yet to find it) meaning that people were usually anxious to a degree. But not with everyone. Not with Mikey, for God’s sake. 

And it wasn’t like he thought Mikey was going to _tell on him_ to Frank or whatever. It was just that he couldn’t stand the thought of everyone knowing and pitying him, or the thought of Frank — and here his stomach pitched so low he thought he might throw up again, walking through the middle of the terminal — knowing and then questioning Gerard. Because then Gerard would have to say out loud that he didn’t have the answer to this, when he was supposed to be the one with the answer to everything. 

That sadness came again, the same one he’d felt in the van, piercing through him and enveloping him, sharp and cold. He’d been sad about this situation before, of course, spent way more time feeling that way than he’d like to admit. He’d been angry, too, quietly crumbling away inside because he always turned his anger inwards. This was neither of those. It was far from self-pitying; it was more like a phantom pain, almost like he was feeling someone else’s emotions, overtaking him suddenly and without warning and applying themselves to his life. 

“Hey.” Bob’s elbow against his nudged him out of his reverie. They’d stopped walking, were standing in front of the circular baggage claim. “That’s yours, right?” 

“Oh. Yeah, yeah,” Gerard said, and hurried forward to grab his suitcase. When he came back, everyone was looking at him oddly, and he shrugged his jacket a little forward on his shoulders, flushing. “What?” 

“You okay?” Ray asked. “Your suitcase went by like five times.” 

“Just tired,” he said automatically. _The oldest fake answer to that question in the book._ “I didn’t sleep on the plane.” 

Mikey didn’t buy it, Gerard could tell from how he was tilting his head to the side and looking at him from under his bangs. For a kid with a live-in hairdresser his hair seemed to always be in his eyes. Everyone else seemed willing enough to give it up, though, so they all filed onto the people mover. Frank was walking backwards and it was so goofy that it made Gerard smile even though he was still feeling the after-effects of that sadness like he’d broken a fever or something. 

The ride into the city — thank God they’d been given a car from the higher-ups — was relatively painless, and the woman at the hostel was patient and kind as Brian limped through his French 101 to ask if they could drop their bags in the room. “I didn’t know you spoke French other than swear words, Schecter,” Bob said as they shouldered into a tiny supply closet and began to shove their suitcases in, stacked one on top of each other like sardines. 

“I did go to college, you know, before I decided to become a tattoo-shop-owning warrior for God,” Brian replied, slamming the door shut and slinging his backpack over his shoulder. “Father,” he said, “are you sure you don’t need to go to sleep?” 

“Guys, I fly international all the time,” Gerard said, trying and failing to bite back the edge of exasperation that was eating its way into his voice. “I can do this. If I sleep now my schedule’s just gonna be fucked up for days.” 

“Oh, you _fly international,_ la di dah,” Frank parroted. “Listen, dude, I know what a shitty night’s sleep looks like, and I know what something _worse_ looks like. I know you’re not gonna sleep, now,” he said when Gerard opened his mouth, “but just, I don’t know, be careful, all right? You look like you’re coming down with something, I don’t know.” 

“All right, Iero, what are you, his mom?” Bob said. “He’s a grown man. I’m pretty sure he can handle himself.” 

Gerard felt a sudden rush of affection towards Bob, even as Frank’s ears went pink and he shoved his hands deep into his pockets. 

“Okay. All right.” Brian heaved a sigh, long-suffering, and looked up at the ceiling like he was having a conversation with God in which he asked why he’d been tasked with looking after these idiots. (He’d done it out loud more than once; Gerard had heard him at the rest stop once, counting change to slot into the gas pump.) “Our meeting with that priest isn’t until tomorrow, right?” At Gerard’s nod, Brian reached into his pocket and unfolded a little map like a dad on a trip to Disney World with the five most headache-inducing children on the planet. “Let’s get breakfast before we do anything else.” 

“Yes,” Mikey agreed immediately. “Coffee.” 

“Café,” Brian corrected, and Ray rolled his eyes at Mikey behind Brian’s back, and Mikey _giggled_ which was something Gerard thought he’d never hear again after Mikey turned 12. He filed that away to mention later, and watched as Brian loftily ignored the laughter behind him. Even Bob cracked a smile, and finally that odd sadness was working itself out of Gerard’s system. 

At the cafe down the street from the hostel, Frank was looking over Gerard’s shoulder as he and Brian pored over the map, taking a cigarette from the carton. “Fuck. I missed smoking like this,” he muttered, his tattooed fingers finding a smoke and bringing it to his lips. “A beautiful city, where everyone’s hot and they all smoke wherever they damn well please. Gerard, can I get a light?” 

Gerard tore himself away from the sights laid out on the table and reached inside his pocket for the lighter. The only one they’d had left at the store on the corner was bright pink, but he kind of loved that. With a flick and a spark, it ignited, and Gerard waited for a split second, expecting Frank to hold the cigarette out to him. Instead, he just shifted his it forward in his mouth, the muscles in his cheeks moving, emphasizing the sharp line of his mouth and the stubble just starting to poke through. Eyes half-lidded, almost meeting Gerard’s. 

Gerard felt himself flush all the way down to his throat, and his hand shook as he pressed the flame to the end of the cigarette until the paper caught. 

“Thanks,” Frank muttered, and drew away, slouching back to his own seat, returning the world to normal speed from the slow-motion drag it seemed to have lapsed into. 

_You’re being fucking ridiculous,_ Gerard berated himself internally, slipping the lighter away. _That was a completely normal interaction that you just lost your shit over. Get a grip._ The horny part of his brain refused to listen to him, too busy ping-ponging around the inside of his head like Pac-Man on ketamine. 

“We could go to Notre Dame,” Brian was saying, stabbing a finger at the map, paper crinkling. 

“Oh, great. We spend all our time in churches already, let’s visit another one on our day off,” Frank rolled his eyes, a few flakes of ash drifting down from the end of his smoke. “Are you sure this isn’t just a long con to convert me?" 

“Plenty of other souls out there need saving, too, what makes you think you’re so special?” Brian griped. 

“We could go to Sainte-Chapelle,” Gerard said, shifting forward a little and picking up his own cigarette from where it was burning in the ashtray. “It’s got these incredible stained-glass windows. 15 meters high, surrounding the whole room. They tell the whole story of the Bible, the line of David, the life of Jesus…” He’d never been, but he’d seen the pictures often enough in books at art school. “Right behind the altar are the windows of the Passion, they’re masterpieces, and inside the altar is where —“ Oh, _fuck._ Instant regret, he’d gotten too excited and run his mouth off without thinking and now he was ramming face-first into a brick fucking wall. 

“What?” Ray asked. 

There wasn’t any point in not answering, now, not after he’d practically already said it. “Is where they keep the Crown of Thorns,” Gerard said in a small voice. 

The shift in the air was palpable. Everyone kind of winced, and Frank looked like his own storm cloud had manifested above his head. “Oh, yeah, that sounds like a fun thing to do. I’ll go see the thing that gave me a ring of scars around my head that I can never get rid of. Great memories!” 

“It’s not _real,_ ” Gerard interjected hurriedly, but there was no point, Frank was already going. 

“Yeah, but all those people like you think it is, right?” He was really angry; Gerard had maybe never seen him this angry since they convinced him to come with them on this crazy Catholic superhero mission thing. 

“Frankie, come on,” Bob said, and reached out to touch him on the shoulder, but he shrugged out of the way. 

“Don’t they?” Frank asked Gerard, and Gerard could tell that this was not a time to give a real answer on this, even though it was practically slamming at the back of his teeth. “And they’re all like, boo-hoo, the suffering is so _beautiful._ It’s fucking not. All it is is…” He wiped his wrist over his eyes. “Just pain. For no reason. No fucking reason at all.” 

No one knew what to say to that. Inside himself, Gerard’s hopeful excitement had curdled and was sitting at the bottom of his stomach like a rock, drying his mouth, making his heart beat twice as fast. Another reminder that no matter how much he cared, no matter how much he wished he could take the pain back and onto himself, he couldn’t undo it. 

“Frank, I’m sorry,” he eventually managed, quiet, watching his cigarette burn and Frank slightly out of focus behind it. It hurt too much to try and look directly at him when he was like this, messy and open, his eyes red and his hands curled so tight into fists that his knuckles were yellow-white against his pants. It was like being back in that basement room every time. 

Frank shrugged, with effort. “Yeah. Not your fault this city is a fucking Catholic theme park,” he mumbled. Mikey snorted, then looked stricken, as if he wasn’t sure he was supposed to do that, but the crooked grin that spread across Frank’s face in response was like the sun came out again. Gerard could practically feel the warmth on his skin, and it was all he could do not to bask in it, fully turn his face into it. 

“So. No churches.” Brian drained the last of the espresso from his mug. “I mean, shit. Do you guys just wanna go to the Louvre?” 

“That sounds expensive,” Ray said slowly, tracing his finger outside the rim of his cup. 

“We have a little money,” Brian affirmed. “I mean, stuff I’ve been sitting on, we can replenish it after this.” 

“You’ve been sitting on money? Motherfucker.” Bob scowled and toed the edge of the table. 

“Come on, Bryar, I was saving it for shit like this.” 

“I think we should go,” Ray offered. “I mean, it can be, like, enriching, right? A shit-ton of religious art and stuff.” 

“Oh, this better not turn into fuckin’ CCD art lessons with Father Way,” Frank said, but with no animosity. His cigarette wagged up and down between his lips. 

Gerard felt tension ease slowly out of his muscles like a balloon with a pinhole. “No preaching. I promise.” 

Mikey slid his phone shut with a sharp click and straightened up in his chair. The first thing he’d done after getting through customs was make a beeline for the cell phone company stand and buy himself international service, and it seemed to already be coming in handy. “I have a friend who moved here from New York who wants us to come to her club tonight.” 

“There you go, y’see?” Brian waved expansively in the direction of Mikey’s Sidekick and the many mysterious secrets it contained within its tiny technological body. “Culture today, partying tonight.” 

“Mass tomorrow,” Gerard reminded, smiling when the predictable groan erupted. “Yeah, they still got Sundays in France.” 

“I think I’m coming down with something,” Frank deadpanned, flicking his eyes over to Gerard and twitching his mouth with the tiniest of smiles to show they were good. 

“Oh, yeah, real bad case of the Irish flu,” Ray snarked, and rapped Frank on the back of the head with no real force. “Come on, it’s not gonna kill you.” 

“Tell that to my hangover and my jet lag tomorrow morning,” Frank groaned. 

By the time they got to the museum it was just starting to get warm, so it was a relief to duck into the cool stone building. They saw the Mona Lisa first, at Ray’s insistence, her tiny yellowed face staring back at them through inch-thick glass. Gerard met her eyes and felt the mystery of her smile touch him, an emotion he didn’t quite know how to place swelling within him, as if she’d reached through five hundred years of history to speak to him here today. 

He felt Frank settle on his right, leaning his elbows on the wooden railing and staring at the painting, bent over slightly. Gerard expected a snarky comment, something about how small she was, but instead, Frank said softly, “She’s beautiful.” 

_Lord._ “She really is,” Gerard agreed. 

Their arms brushed, Frank nudging his elbow into Gerard’s fingers, splayed out on the rail. “You went to art school, right? You ever study Da Vinci?” 

“I mean, sure. Can’t really avoid him. Not that I’d want to.” Gerard ran a hand through his hair and tore his gaze away as he and Frank moved away from the viewing area; it was getting closer to a peak time, and the room was filling up. Behind them, Ray and Mikey trailed, chattering quietly, and Bob and Brian had just moved up to view the painting themselves. “And he did a crapload of sacred art, too, of course, so y’know, I see him all the fuckin’ time.” 

Frank nodded. “Yeah. Last Supper, all that kind of stuff. I guess there wasn’t all that much else to paint.” 

“Da Vinci was almost definitely gay,” Gerard said as they turned the corner back into the main gallery. “But he made all this art that’s some of the most holy images we have in modern society today.” 

“It’s kind of crazy how stuff like that can change,” Frank remarked, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I mean I think we think our society right now is like, the most progressive in history just ‘cause it’s the latest, you know?” 

“Yeah,” Gerard murmured. He slid his eyes over the paintings on the walls just so he could keep them off Frank. 

There was a short silence, then: “How do you do it, man?” Frank asked. “I mean, everyone you work with is against you. Or at least, almost everyone.” 

Smiling wryly, Gerard looked up at the ceiling. “How did Da Vinci do it? I do it because... Because I have to.” He always struggled explaining this, this burning purpose that he felt inside his chest, the love he had for God and the world He created. “Because I want to be the person fighting for the God _I_ know. Even if I’m fighting alone.” 

When Gerard looked back over, there was an expression just leaving Frank’s face that was secretive and hard to understand and that made Gerard blush, for some reason, all the way to the tip of his nose. 

They walked down endless flights of stairs, it felt like, shouldering their way through galleries of furniture and paintings of the kind Gerard had only seen in books, eventually ending up in an airy gallery. It had plants and high greenhouse ceilings and white stone walls and was filled with sculptures, and the crowd was a little thinner. Ray was staring at a statue of Napoleon half-encased in rock with Mikey half-looking, drifting over his shoulder, Brian had the map out and was staring at it confusedly, and Frank and Bob were pointing at the dick on one of the Greek gods. It was exactly what Gerard would have assumed they’d all be doing if he’d been asked. That kind of easy familiarity was a new thing, but so, so welcome. Before this, his profession was a lonely one; being a youth pastor was probably the last time he’d truly connected with anyone other than Mikey or his parents. Now he had five people, and even when they got on his nerves — when Brian micromanaged, when Frank snarked, when Bob went quiet and sullen, when they all smelled like a burning gym sock — he was grateful. 

Not wanting to disturb anyone from their own little rituals, Gerard let his eyes sweep the room, searching for something to approach, and it wasn’t long before he saw her. Standing tall on her pedestal, skirts tied up to stay out of the way of her armor-clad feet, one hand on the helmet of her suit of armor resting beside her and the other cupped around her ear, her head cocked, her face intent. _Joan of Arc._

He’d always been enamored with her story. The bravery it must have taken to do what she did. And he was willing to admit that he was jealous of her; the way she pursued her dreams without stopping, the way she loved God so much it blurred the line between madness and devotion. And the fact that no one really could tell which it was, the possibility that maybe she _was_ touched by His hand. Joan of Arc was almost everything Catholicism today feared wrapped up in a package that they loved; (1) a woman who (2) refused gender norms and (3) dressed like a man, (4) claiming authority because she (5) heard the voice of God. 

He wanted what she had. Following her heart wherever it led her, no hesitation or second-guessing, the willingness to endure the purifying flame because of faith so deep it was literally unshakable. More than anything, Gerard wanted to _believe_ like her. 

A hand on his shoulder made him jump, and he turned to see a man — couldn’t have been much older than Gerard himself — with a collar that matched his own standing behind him. “Pardonnez-moi, mais je—“ 

“Je suis désolé, Pére, je ne parle pas français,” Gerard said, flat, Jersey, and winced. He could understand and read French well enough thanks to Latin, but he’d never be able to speak it. It always came out sounding like a parody of an American trying to be cultured. 

“Oh, American?” The man raised his eyebrows, and when Gerard nodded, he looked at him askance. “You are not Father Way, by chance, are you?” 

If Gerard was still at all surprised by things like coincidences, his jaw would be located somewhere on the floor, but by now he half-expected shit like this to happen. Small world in general, even smaller when your circle is limited to clergy in the Catholic Church and people who are afflicted with miracles or catastrophes. “That’s me, yeah.” 

“I did not want to assume,” the priest said, smiling with thin lips and reaching a hand out to Gerard. “But I saw your collar and your hair…” He made an odd motion by the side of his head, around his shoulders. “And you were admiring the statue of St. Jeanne. When I first heard about what you were doing from the Cardinal, I must admit I did some research. I am Pére Paquet.” 

“Wow. He works in mysterious ways,” Gerard said, shaking the man’s hand — it was warm and solid, a priestly handshake if he’d ever felt one. He was wearing some kind of cologne, or maybe it was incense from the church, a warm and dusty and somehow familiar smell. 

“Quite true. We were supposed to meet tomorrow, yet it was God’s will that we be brought together today, yes?” 

“What else would it be?” Gerard smiled, but made a note to ask Mikey what else it actually _could_ be. “You said you did, uh, research on me…?” 

“I feel as if that may have conveyed the wrong sentiment,” Paquet frowned. “I do not wish to seem… overbearing? I only meant that I was interested in how you came to this rather unique occupation.” 

“I guess you would say I was Called,” Gerard said wryly. 

Paquet laughed, a laugh that was nearly completely silent. “I suppose that is a part of the truth. And if you cannot tell me I will not press you. But while I was hearing about your history I learned about your fascination with Sainte Jeanne D’Arc. Some of your writings from seminary were sent to me… I quite found them inspiring.” 

Gerard had been grimacing, expecting the admonition he usually received from priests who had read his papers, but he dropped the expression and felt his mouth fall into a comical, perfect “O” shape. “Really?” 

That hushed laugh again. “Yes. I think you will find that in France, we are a bit more liberal with our religion than you Americans. It is somewhat by necessity, church attendance is quite low, but more or less we have always been this way.” 

“Well, I’m flattered,” Gerard replied. Part of him was a bit more than flattered — actually, he was a few seconds away from jumping up and down in the middle of the museum and talking this guy’s ear off. Someone he could actually talk to about theology without having to awkwardly navigate around sexism, racism, homophobia? Someone who valued his opinions instead of calling him at best uneducated and at worst sacrilegious? This day was _really_ looking up sharply considering that it started with vomit. 

“I will not take up your time any more today,” Paquet was saying. “We have tomorrow to discuss, yes? And in a much less public place. But I am very glad we were able to meet today, Father Way.” 

“Yeah, no, for sure. Me too.” Gerard smiled and pushed his hand through his hair, about to reach out for a handshake when Mikey drifted over. “Oh, hey, Mikes. Father Paquet — this is Mikey, my little brother.” 

“Nice to meet you,” Mikey said automatically, shook the Father’s hand — and Gerard watched his face change nearly imperceptibly as their skin touched. It was weird, and Gerard didn’t want to think about it at the moment, so he mentally pushed it away for a second. 

“Wait, tomorrow’s Sunday.” Gerard raised his eyebrows. “Could I get the address of your church? Maybe we could come to Mass.” 

Hesitation flickered across Paquet’s face, followed by regret. “Ah, my friend, I am afraid we only have services in French. But tomorrow I will be in contact with you, yes? I will send you the address, and we can speak about the matter the Cardinal has brought up to you. I will be hearing confession before our meeting if you would like. That I can do in English.” 

“Oh, yeah, that’d be great.” Gerard beamed and patted the Father on the back, feeling lighter. “Maybe I’ll stop by. But I’ll see you tomorrow then.” 

“Enjoy your time in this city,” Paquet sighed, gesturing around himself at the gallery. “Its beauty is unmatched. Whether you find anything beneath that... I hope that with the blessing of God, you are able to see what I see here. _Au revoir,_ Father Way.” 

And with that he was gone, robes sweeping behind him as he disappeared into the next room. 

Mikey broke the silence. “That’s the guy we’re working for?” 

“Yeah,” Gerard said, trying to stop himself from bouncing on the balls of his feet. 

Wrinkling his nose, Mikey made a sour face. “He’s weird, Gee.” 

“Well, yeah, of course he is. Priests in France aren’t like priests in America.” 

“That’s not what I mean.” Mikey shook his head. “I didn’t... When I shake people’s hands, or touch them, I sometimes get a sort of...” He sighed, inwardly exasperated. “I can read people. Usually. But this guy, I don’t know. He was closed off, like, walls down.” He brought his open hand down onto his other one in an imitation of what he was trying to say. "I couldn’t feel anything from him.” 

“Mikey, it’s not like a closed-off priest is unusual.” 

“Not like that.” Now he was outwardly exasperated, and rolled his eyes at Gerard. “Like… psychically.” 

Gerard goggled at Mikey. “Wow, I never thought you would say it out loud.” 

“Well, you’re being dumb,” Mikey muttered, tugging his hat a little lower over his ears. “You know what I mean.” 

Softening, Gerard agreed, “Yeah, I know what you mean.” He rolled his head back on his shoulders and stared up at the glass ceiling and the cloudy sky beyond. “I just… I don’t know. I think he’s okay, I mean, I’ve got a good feeling about it.” 

“You have a good feeling about everyone.” Mikey shoved his hands in his pockets. “You want everyone to be a good person.” 

“Is that a bad thing?” Gerard blew out a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose, his good mood already dissipating like the sun had gone behind the clouds. “I get what you’re saying. I’ll keep an eye out, okay?” 

“‘Kay.” Mikey nodded, and bumped his shoulder against Gerard’s as he walked back over to Bob and Frank. Gerard could hear them laughing about something and wondered idly what it was, then closed his eyes as a wave of tiredness overwhelmed him. What the fuck was going on? Literally five minutes ago he’d been excited, and now he felt like he needed to take a nap. 

He made his way over to a bench and slumped down on it, burying his face in his hands as the first few drops of rain started to fall on the ceiling above. 

“Yo, you okay?” When Gerard looked up, Frank was standing over him, his arms crossed, chewing on his lip. 

“I’m… yes.” He sat up a little and straightened out his legs. “I don’t know. I think the jetlag is catching up with me.” For a second Gerard went to brush his hand through his hair, but he found himself impeded by a hand darting out and wrapping itself around his wrist, and he looked up, swallowing audibly at the feeling of Frank’s fingers warm on his pulse point. 

If anything, Frank looked just as surprised that he’d done that as Gerard was. “Ray’s gonna kill you if you don’t stop fucking up your hair, dude,” he murmured, and let go again. 

Gerard took a moment to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “I just feel really tired all of a sudden. I don’t know.” 

“I _told_ you you looked like shit.” Frank sighed. “Look, I get sick all the time —“ 

“I’m not getting sick,” Gerard said, and he knew he sounded stubborn, but he just _wasn’t_. 

“And I say that shit all the time, too.” Frank raised his eyebrows and started to fiddle with the sweatbands he was wearing around his wrists to cover the scars. He’d swiped them from Mikey, Gerard recognized the pattern, red white and blue stripes. “Just take it easy, okay?” 

“I _do_ take it easy. I’m not getting sick.” 

Throwing up his hands, Frank turned around and started walking away. “Fine. Fine.” He paused for a second, whirled around and pointed at Gerard. “If you do, don’t say I didn’t warn you. And I will be saying that I told you so.” 

It didn’t even end up mattering that Gerard was feeling so tired, because on their way out they passed this absolutely gorgeous painting of one of the most batshit insane parts of the Bible and he got distracted enough by telling it that he kind of forgot all about the heavy weight of fatigue behind his eyes. 

“Wait, a hundred _foreskins?_ ” Ray’s eyes went wide as a deer’s in headlights, and he started shaking his head very fast, his hair bouncing almost comically. “Why? Just why? Why not, like, a hundred toes? Or a hundred belts? Or something not related to mutilation of the genitals?” 

“That’s not even the worst part, though,” Gerard nodded earnestly. He was probably smiling too much considering he was talking about foreskin removal, but this was the shit he loved — the fun, funny parts of the Bible that got ignored, the way people could actually be _interested_ if you presented the Bible as a collection of stories instead of a boring leather-bound law book. “David didn’t just get the hundred. He actually went out and got two hundred.” 

“Shit.” Bob whistled. “Why?” 

“He really wanted to marry Saul’s daughter. And Saul was like, well, there’s no way this guy is gonna kill all those people and get their foreskins, but he did it.” 

“Inspiring,” Mikey quipped. 

“Would you slice off two hundred foreskins for the one you love, Mikeyway?” Brian wanted to know. 

“Wuargh,” Mikey responded, and clapped his hands over his ears. “I’m not here. I’m somewhere far away where I don’t have to think about a knife coming in contact with any of my private parts.” 

Frank wasn’t saying anything, chiefly because he was laughing so hard he was bent in two, and he caught Gerard’s eye for a minute and a small moment flashed between them, where his smile deepened just a little and Gerard felt himself grin like a crazy person in response. The familiar aching followed in swift succession, but he almost didn’t care, he was used to this by now, and the high points of contact were completely worth the lows of pain that followed. 

By the time they made it out of the museum it was getting late in the afternoon, so they went back to the hostel and unpacked their stuff as well as they could, hauling it back out of the supply closet and into their rooms. It was more like a few different open chambers with a few beds in each one, flimsy things that could be called walls if one was feeling charitable in between them and curtains to draw closed at the end of the beds. Gerard toed his suitcase under his bed and sat down with a heavy thump. At least the sheets were clean. 

“Hey.” The curtain was drawn aside with a clanging of rings, and Frank peeked around. “Are you coming with us tonight?” Noticing Gerard’s bag on the floor, he made a face. “Ugh, also, can you move that out of here? That shit smells like the bottom of Ray’s trunk, it’s nasty.” 

Blinking, Gerard turned to him. “To dinner?” He ignored the comment about his bag -- to him, it smelled fine, and it wasn’t like he was going to leave it in the hallway for some random tourist to find. 

“You’re obviously coming to dinner. I mean to the club afterwards.” 

“I don’t know,” Gerard hedged. He’d felt so crappy earlier in the day, and he didn’t get much sleep the night before… 

“Oh, come on, Gee.” That was Mikey, from across the hall. _Good thing this place was mostly empty._

“I also think it’d be good if you went,” Ray piped up. 

Gerard couldn’t stop himself from smiling at that. It was nice to feel wanted, it really was that simple. “Okay. Yeah, sure, I’ll come, what the hell.” 

“Okay, cool.” Frank grinned, crooked, his lip ring glinting in the late afternoon sun. “Don’t wear your priest outfit, though, the French may be ‘more liberal’ than us—“ Here he used air quotes, and Gerard deeply regretted giving him the details of his conversation and another thing for him to pick at the Church for— “but I don’t think they’d be too hot on letting a priest into a place so out of his wheelhouse.” 

“God is everywhere, Frankie, including clubs.” 

“Maybe he’s there, but it’s not his place, it’s the domain of the flesh, baby.” Frank wiggled his eyebrows, and closed the curtain again with a flourish as Gerard rolled his eyes. (Fondly. Almost everything he did with Frank could be labeled “fond” at this point.) 

Dinner was nothing special; as it turned out, McDonald’s in France was much the same as McDonald’s in America, but they did have a cute little bakery inside the restaurant, and Gerard dug out a 2-euro coin from the deep recesses of his wallet and bought himself a strawberry macaron. 

“Aw, it’s so cute,” Frank said, around mouthfuls of the giant chocolate-chocolate cookie he’d opted to purchase instead. 

“I always buy myself one of these if I have a stop in Paris on the way to Rome,” Gerard said, crunching through the delicate exterior of the cookie to the soft, sticky middle. 

Mikey and Ray had split a croissant and were licking the flaky layers from their fingers. It was getting all over Ray’s shirt and as Mikey reached out to brush the crumbs away, he asked, “So are you guys ready to go?” 

“Where is this place again?” Bob crumpled the paper his cupcake had come in against his knee before tossing it lightly in the trash can. 

“It’s not far. It’s like two subway stops away.” Mikey flicked his hair out of his eyes and pulled out his phone, checking the address. “Lindsey said she’d meet us there.” 

“Is this someone you used to date?” Gerard asked, frowning. It kind of seemed like Mikey had an endless parade of girlfriends and boyfriends (or at least _partners_ if he didn’t want to use such a serious term). 

Mikey made a face. “No. We’re just friends. She’s into girls.” 

“Sorry! Sorry. It’s hard to keep track.” 

“Dude, your brother just called you a man-slut,” Frank giggled. 

“That is _not_ what I said,” Gerard defended. “I just mean, Mikey has a lot of people in his life. And that’s good! Who wouldn’t want to be in his life?” 

“Aw, you always ruin the joke and make it nice,” Bob said. 

“Also, I don’t slut shame.” 

“I mean, you probably _should,_ ” Brian said. “The Bible would. And Mikey does get around…” 

He dodged out of the way just as Ray reached out to cuff him on the shoulder. “Oh, c’mon, Schechter, you’re just jealous. You wish you got half the action Mikeyway gets.” 

“All right, can we stop talking about my little brother’s sexual habits, please!” Gerard blurted, about two seconds away from fully covering his ears. 

“Sure, let’s talk about yours instead,” Bob deadpanned. 

“Open-and-shut conversation,” Gerard replied dryly. “None. Now let’s pick a new topic.” 

“If you were going to break your vows of celibacy for one person,” Brian asked, following behind the group, doing his little mother-hen herding thing as they went down the stairs into the subway, “who would it be?” 

_Don’t look at Frank. Don’t look at Frank._ Even having the thought filled him with sick uncertainty. Gerard could feel his face go crimson red. “It doesn’t really work like that.” 

“Just a hypothetical. I mean you can’t tell me you _never_ think about sex.” 

“It’s not that I never think about sex. I’m a priest, but I’m still — cut me and I’ll fuckin’ bleed, y'know.” Gerard slid through the turnstile and onto the platform, crossed his arms high over his chest, protective. “It’s that there’s nothing — sex isn’t that good to make me wanna leave this behind.” 

Bob huffed out a laugh, and Gerard could tell what he was going to say. “And it doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of the sex I’ve had before.” It came out a little tighter than he expected. 

Mikey and Ray were looking at some weird poster advertising maybe a food delivery service, and were pointedly not paying attention, but Frank was silent, playing with his cigarettes again, and the memory of the night they’d spent in bed together was heavy in the air. 

_Yelling at the TV together?_

_Yeah. Yeah, I miss that._

Gerard closed his eyes tight until little designs started popping up in the darkness. 

_I’m only human, Frank._

The train roared onto the metro track not six inches from Gerard’s nose, and he felt it blow through his hair, his clothes. He opened his eyes again and got on and didn’t look back. 

The club was a dingy little slice of a thing from the outside, sandwiched between two of the white stone buildings that lined the stately streets, and Gerard was panicky for a second, but then they went inside and it was larger than it looked, two big rooms with ceilings low enough that Bob had to duck.. The first was dimly lit, all orange and dark, soft edges, with couches, and there was music drifting in. The music turned out to be coming from the next room, which was filled with a crush of people and at the very end there was a stage, on which a tiny orange-haired woman was singing, a band behind her, fast and loud and earnest. A bar was tucked in the corner, and everyone beelined for it except Mikey, who was chatting with a woman in the first room, bleach-blonde hair tucked into a ponytail, tanned skin and an easy smile. There was a camera slung around her neck. 

Unsure, Gerard drifted over to his side, and was greeted with as bright a smile as Mikey ever gave. “Hey Gee, this is Lindsey.” 

“Hi,” he said, and shook her hand. It was warm and calloused, and she smiled and showed her eyeteeth at him. “So you own this place, huh?" 

“Yeah,” she said. “I did gig photography forever, and this kind of fell into my lap, so…” 

“That’s awesome,” Gerard smiled. “Mikey and I used to want to be in a band, you know.” 

“Why weren’t you?” she asked, brought her whiskey to her mouth and took a sip. 

“You know.” Gerard gestured vaguely in the air, hoping that would suffice and he wouldn’t have to launch into the explanation of “art school, college, crippling addiction, finding Jesus.” 

Luckily, Lindsey didn’t press the issue, instead using her camera to point to the other room. “Well, if you want to see some music, that’s my girlfriend up there. She’s good. I mean, I’m biased, but she’s good.” 

It wasn’t like Gerard was going to avoid music for free, so he followed them, lost himself in the music for a few moments. The girlfriend _was_ good, shaking her fiery hair all over the stage and belting out like she could bring the walls down with her voice. And the guitars were a wall of noise behind her, and the drums were pounding, and there was sweat streaming down the sides of Gerard’s face so he was finally forced to push out of the throng, a little shaky, his Metallica shirt stuck to his skin. Lindsey’s camera flashed, on and off, on and off, lighting up the room. 

He pushed his back against the wall and blew out a sigh. Maybe he was getting too old for this; he felt dead on his feet now that he’d broken away from the crowd of people. 

An arm thrust its way into his field of vision and landed on one side of his head. Gerard followed the appendage to its owner, who must have gotten close while he was wrapped up in his own thoughts. The man was a good deal taller than Gerard, a jawline that could cut steel, eyes so fucking cold it hurt to look at them. There was a ring glinting in his eyebrow, and Gerard knew that if Frank saw it he’d shudder; it was crooked and too deeply pierced, altogether bad. 

The guy was shouting something over the noise, but it was totally blocked out by the pounding of the drums and the wail of the guitars, and Gerard shook his head. He couldn’t tell if it was English or French, so body movements would have to do. 

What didn’t need translating was the way the guy leaned in after that, his arms caging Gerard in, his breath beer-sour and hot on Gerard’s cheek. “ _Laissez-moi vous payer un verre_ , let me buy you drink, yes?” 

_Oh._ Oh, no. Gerard kind of forgot this happened. It was so rare he went out without his collar… “No, _désolé_ , sorry,” he tried, looking for a way to duck out of the guy’s stance. “I don’t drink.” 

“Then we do not have to,” the guy grinned, but it was creepy, dead behind the eyes like a fucking shark. He couldn’t have been that big but he was taking up so much _space_ , covering what felt like half the wall. “We can skip this part? Get straight to the fun?” 

His hand tried to slide lower, but Gerard yelped and jumped away from the wall, accidentally clonking his head into the dude’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said automatically, then shook his head. “I’m a priest.” 

If it was even possible, the guy’s laugh was scarier than his smile. “And I am the American president. You can be whatever you want with me, pretty boy…” 

“No, that’s not --” Gerard squawked, continuing his wriggling like some kind of worm with anxiety. “I mean it.” The guy was still pressing in, his gross breath hot on Gerard’s neck and making his skin crawl, arms everywhere he turned -- 

Then there was an arm around Gerard’s waist that came from somewhere else entirely, much more casual and comfortable, one that squeezed him in a facsimile of a hug. It belonged to Frank, who raised his eyebrows ever so slightly at Gerard in what might be called a conspiratory manner in a less serious situation. “Hey, baby. You okay?” he said more into his neck than to his face. 

_He should have felt bad._ He should have felt guilty. But instead, all there was was a flood of relief that almost made Gerard’s knees buckle as the creep finally backed off. “I am now,” Gerard said, and leaned into the touch. _Playing the part. Just playing the part._ Lying to himself. Frank’s lips were millimeters from his skin; he couldn’t press any closer, but he wouldn’t move away, either, trapped in torturous suspension. 

“This guy bothering you?” Given his relatively short height, although Gerard wasn’t exactly in a position to throw stones, Frank could be intimidating when he wanted to be, tattooed and pierced and scarred and enough energy brimming in him that it practically crackled off his skin. He looked up at the dude, who had at least five inches on _Gerard,_ even, with his jaw set, his chin tilted up in a challenge. “Leave my boyfriend alone, pal, get your own.” 

“And what if I do not?” the man muttered sulkily, his eyes flickering back and forth between them, Frank’s hand on Gerard’s waist (he squeezed a little at the stare). 

“Do you _really_ want to find out, motherfucker?” Frank asked, terse, and even if ‘motherfucker’ didn’t translate amazingly to a non-native English speaker, the guy seemed to get the message, since he turned around and walked away, flipping them off as he disappeared into the crowd. 

For a few seconds, as the guy left, Frank kept his arm around Gerard, his eyebrows drawn together. Gerard couldn’t decide whether he wanted the moment to be over so it would stop being so tempting to fully sag into Frank’s touch or whether he wanted it to last forever, this excuse to be held. While he was pondering this Frank let go, and Gerard snatched control of himself back enough to not fall over with the loss of support. “Thanks,” he said shakily, his pulse pounding in his throat. 

“That guy was fuckin’ asking for it,” Frank said, gesturing with the beer in his other hand. His face was sour. “What an asshole. I wish I could have just hauled off and punched him.” 

“I don’t think Mikey would be real happy if we got kicked out of his friend’s club.” 

“Yeah, but come on, that guy’s hand was like trying to Krazy Glue itself to your ass. I changed my mind, actually, I wish _you_ could’ve punched him.” 

“Not really an option,” Gerard said, and toed at the floor with his boot. He didn’t want to punch the guy, even if he wasn’t a pacifist, but it reminded him of another time that had gotten him in trouble, a knee on his throat, the grimy basement going dark at the edges. 

“I know, I know,” Frank acquiesced and took a sip from his beer. “Next time if I see you getting felt up by some creep with an embarrassingly shitty eyebrow piercing —“ Gerard had to work to not smile at the fact that he’d known Frank would notice that — “I’ll send over Bob. Bob’s a lot scarier than me.” 

“I don’t know,” Gerard said doubtfully. “Bob’s bigger, but he doesn’t have the energy you do. Or your tattoos and piercings.” 

“Oh, so I did a good job ‘cause I’m fucking crazy. Thanks,” Frank said dryly, raised his bottle in a joking toast. 

“You did a good job because you _care_ , Frankie,” Gerard said. It kind of came out of his mouth before he could stop it. But it was true; he knew that Frank would do this for any of them, and that if it had gone further he would have thrown punches. Because he knew Gerard couldn’t, and someone had to do it. 

“Oh.” Frank’s eyebrows shot halfway up his forehead. “I, uh. Thanks.” 

“No, thank you, really,” Gerard sighed, and raked a hand through his hair. “I need a fucking cigarette. I’m going outside, okay?” 

“I think Brian’s out there.” Frank jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Listen, I’m gonna go talk to that guitarist, Lindsey said his name is Taylor, I wanna hear about his setup. I’ll be here if…” And he trailed off awkwardly into a shrug. 

Gerard knew what he meant without having to hear the words and he was so fiercely grateful that for a second it almost eclipsed the regular dull hurt of loving Frank. “Thank you,” he said, broken record, and Frank nodded, made a half-movement that might have been a clap on the shoulder if it had been completed, and melted into the people like he belonged. 

It was still hazy and warm outside on the street, the dim lights casting a glow over the pavement. A group of people sitting on the terrace at a cafe down the street let out a roar of laughter that Gerard could hear as he pushed open the door with his hip and got out his lighter. Before he even reached the wall where a small group of people were standing, he had lit up and was dragging smoke raggedly back into his lungs. Cigarettes tasted the same whether he was seventeen or twenty-nine, whether he was crawling his way out of the gutter or waiting to go in and say Mass, whether he was hopeless or just hopelessly in love. 

Brian was deep in conversation with Lindsey, cigarette moving up and down between his lips as they deliberated. Gerard caught the words “rent hikes” and “tenant law” and decided to steer far, far away from that. Instead, he pivoted over to where Lindsey’s girlfriend was, sitting on the curb with her nylon-clad legs stretched out in front of her and gazing down the street. There were a few tattoos that Gerard could see, in the brighter, softer light out here -- a hand holding an envelope, traditional-style, something Bob might bang out in an hour or two for a walk-in -- right next to a stark, bold black cross. “I like your tattoos,” he said. 

Peering up from under her bangs, she smiled, showing a slight gap between her front teeth and a septum ring that glinted merrily at Gerard. “Thanks.” She patted the curb next to her, and Gerard sat down, feeling his jeans complain at the motion. “You’re Mikey’s brother, right?” 

“Yeah,” he said. There was part of him that missed being defined not by Father Way, not by being the leader of their weird little Holy Doom Patrol, but by something as simple as Mikey. 

“I’m Hayley,” she said. “Mikey actually got Linds and I together, so I owe him one.” 

“Yeah?” Gerard smiled. “He does stuff like that. Knows what would be good for people before they do.” 

“Yeah, exactly.” She tilted her head to the side and watched as Gerard blew out a column of smoke. “We were playing at this club Mikey was promoting and Lindsey was the photographer, and the entire time all I could think about was how pretty she was. Honestly, I, I kept messing up, it was kind of embarrassing.” She laughed. “But after we got off, Mikey came up to me, and I really didn’t know him all that much, I’d just seen him at a few other gigs. He dragged me over to Lindsey and the rest is history. I never even said anything to him.” 

Gerard struggled with how to say _Yeah, my brother is psychic_ without actually saying it, and then finally landed on, “He’s just really in-tune with other people.” 

She nodded. “I was really sad when he stopped doing promotions and stuff, but I don’t know, he seems a lot happier now.” Hayley tucked one leg up under her chin and looked sideways at Gerard. “So are you in the body modification business too? Come along with the rest of the shop guys for vacation?” 

“No,” Gerard said. “I… I’m actually a priest.” 

“ _Really._ ” She raised her eyebrows. “Gotta say, I’ve never seen a priest wear a skintight Metallica t-shirt and a leather jacket and visit a club. But then again, I don’t have a ton of experience with priests…?” 

“No, it’s out of the ordinary,” Gerard admitted sheepishly. “You don’t have a ton of priest experience, but you’re a Christian?” He nodded towards her tattoo. 

“Oh, Protestant,” she acknowledged. “Born in Alabama, raised in Tennessee.” There was a silence for a few seconds, before she burst out, “Okay, I have to ask, are you about to start preaching to me about loving the sinner but hating the sin--” 

“No, no, nonononono,” Gerard said, throwing his hands up in the air. “That would make me about the biggest hypocrite on the planet, actually.” His heart jumped a foot upwards as he said it, he could feel it hammering at the hollow of his throat, and he held his breath. 

“Oh.” Then, “ _Oh._ ” 

Some kind of understanding passed between them in that split second, without either of them saying anything, and Gerard felt a weight leave his lungs. He breathed easier. 

“Doesn’t it suck?” Hayley said in a few moments, leaning back on her elbows, staring up at the sky. “To know you were made by God to be this way, and be told by everyone else that it’s actually a mistake _you_ made?” 

“Yes!” Gerard whacked himself on the knee with his palm, watched sparks fly off the end of his second cig. “Like, everyone thinks they know my own fuckin’ relationship with God better than I do.” 

“Exactly.” She lowered herself down until her short, bright hair brushed against the pavement. “Everyone is so obsessed with this one tiny part of the Bible. It’s like they cling to it so hard they give themselves blinders to everything else. I’m sorry, but the Bible says plenty of shit we don’t agree with today. It’s fine with slavery, there are all kinds of other rules we all know are bad, but homosexuality? That’s where they draw the line.” 

“I know.” Gerard shook his head. “It’s so…” He searched for the word in vain. For some reason, it was easy to preach about this (for lack of a better word) to people who didn’t know it intimately -- straight Christians or gay atheists. But talking to someone on the inside was a sharing of a mutual feeling, and he couldn’t come up with a way to describe it that encapsulated the true effect it had. 

“Annoying,” she supplied with feeling, and caught his eye, and then they were both laughing. It wasn’t really funny, but it felt good to be able to talk about it, and it was better than crying. 

Another flood of chattering people spilled out the doors, and Gerard could hear Frank’s voice overtop them all. Hayley turned over her shoulder to look, then jumped up from the curb with a grin, smoothing out her skirt. “Oh, Tay’s out, awesome.” 

Gerard stubbed out the embers of his cigarette against the concrete, then clambered up to a standing position as well. Frank was standing with the curly-haired guitarist, holding his guitar and showing him a riff, looking natural in a way Gerard has only ever seen him look with a needle in his hand. He was loose, his shoulders liquid as he strummed, and there was a guy watching him from the crowd with the same hunger on his face that Gerard felt growing in the pit of his stomach. Jealousy was sour on his tongue at the sight. 

Someone had lit up something that was decidedly not a regular cigarette. It wasn’t weed, just something herbal and heavy-burning, and like the smell worked its way into Gerard’s brain through his nose and flipped a switch, he felt fatigue return to his limbs, all at once. He had to lean against the railing to stay upright. 

Brian walked over, frowning. “Father? You okay?” 

“I think I’m gonna call it a night,” Gerard said apologetically. Secretly, he was glad to have an excuse to turn away from Frank, who was now showing off, shooting little looks at Monsieur Eyefuck to see if he was watching. “I’m still feeling pretty crappy.” True in more than one way. 

“Do you want me to go get Mikey?” Brian asked, but Gerard shook his head. 

“No, it’s okay, it’s not far. I don’t want to make him go back, I just gotta sleep.” 

Brian scrutinized him, making Gerard feel a little bit like a confusing tax form, or the van when it started making weird noises. “Okay. Just call Mikey if you need us, okay?” 

The response that he wouldn’t immediately jumped to the forefront of Gerard’s mind, but he bit it back. These were people who actually meant that when they said it. “Thanks, Brian.” 

Before he walked away, Brian patted Gerard on the shoulder once, his eyes softer than usual. He was a sappy drunk. It was pretty sweet, actually. 

The metro ride back was short but every rattle of the train on the tracks and turn within the tunnels made Gerard’s brain feel like a tiny shriveled-up pea rocketing around the inside of his skull, and it was pounding by the time he got off. That weird smell was still stuck in his nose, hanging around him like a fog. Getting back into the hostel and seeing his bed was such a relief that he could cry, after everything that had happened today. He had intended to take a shower, but the thought of a mattress to sink into and sleep surrounding him, a chance to turn his brain off, was too good to resist, and he barely managed to stumble out of his sweaty club clothes and into pajama pants and a t-shirt before his cheek was against the pillow and he was finally gone. 

Or so he thought. 

In what could have been three hours or twenty minutes Gerard was pulled from sleep like he was falling, frantic, his pulse racing. It took a second before he remembered where he was, and his head was still a little tender. 

A loud bang sounded from next door. _That must have been what woke him up._ The curtain at the end of the bed fluttered in a breeze, and voices made their way under it, the too-loud “whispering” of drunk people. 

“Shhh, shh, be quiet, be quiet.” A giggle. Frank. 

“Why, is there someone else in your room?” French-accented, lower. Unfamiliar. 

“Just my -- one of my friends. He’s asleep. In his own room, but still.” 

“I’ll try, but I am hoping you will make it very difficult for me to be quiet.” 

There was a groan -- Gerard knew it and realized it must have come from Frank, remembering when he’d seen his bird tattoos for the first time, _oh God_ \-- and then some wet sounds that made Gerard’s cheeks hot before he even understood it was kissing. 

Then he was awake for real, like someone had poured a bucket of ice water marked “YOUR LIFE SUCKS” over his head. 

He couldn’t get up and leave now because Frank would know he heard them, and where would he go, anyway? Hide in the bathroom for however long this was gonna take? Sleep wasn’t an option either, obviously, since every molecule of his body was now electrified, his skin burning with shame and lust in equal measure. 

The bed complained through the wall and Frank made an _oof_ noise, then laughed again. “Sorry,” the French guy said. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay. C’mere,” Frank said, low, and Gerard bit down on his lower lip until he felt it grow taut against his tongue, trying not to make whatever pathetic little noise was living inside his chest at the moment. He sounded like Gerard had imagined, every time he had weakened and allowed himself to imagine. 

The kissing noises continued, with gasps interspersed. Frank might have been mouthing his way down the guy’s throat, leaving little marks, and Gerard could not make his brain stop showing him that. It was like a TV inside his mind’s eye that wouldn’t shut off. He was dizzy with some kind of crazy cocktail of jealousy and envy and breathing so shallowly he was halfway to hyperventilating, and though he was trying to ignore it, he was painfully, obviously hard. (Not like it took much -- he’d mostly stopped jerking off, living with Frank made it too much for him to be able to justify.) 

Frank was saying something too quiet for Gerard to hear, and the possibility that he was murmuring it against the guy’s skin was torturous. Even though he had no right to feel it, he was filled to the brim with envy that this French man who neither of them knew and who knew nothing about Frank -- not the way his nose crinkled when he really laughed, not the map of his miles of tattoos, not the way that when he looked at you he really saw you, and only you -- was the one who got to touch him and taste him and take him apart. _It should be me,_ Gerard thought wildly, and had to stifle a moan at the guilt he felt for even acknowledging it. He hated that he thought it, and he hated that he only let himself think it when he was too far gone in his own head to stop himself from being selfish. 

There was a brief silence, then heavy footsteps. A belt clinked, then thudded loudly as it hit the floor, and Frank said, “Found it!” pretty loudly, sending French dude into a chorus of laughter, and then they both did the drunk _shhhh_ -ing each other thing for a second. A crinkling sound and a sharp, shuddering inhalation. When Frank spoke again, his voice was rough, and Gerard tried to block it out but his ears strained of their own accord to hear it. “Fuck, oh my God,” he panted. 

The French guy had a strong accent but his grip on the parts of the English language that were relevant to this particular activity seemed pretty fucking robust. “Fuck me,” he gasped, and Frank laughed that low, warm laugh, and the bed thudded gently, almost imperceptibly, against the wall. 

Gerard didn’t think he’d ever begged someone to fuck him in his life. He’d spent his brief period of sexual activity mostly fumbling his way through awkward hookups that didn’t involve a huge amount of talking, and he’d been too shy to change that. Now he was spending his prime years completely celibate, and planning to continue it for the rest of his life. And it wasn’t like he didn’t know that, or he hadn’t signed up for this by his own choice, but as he laid in bed and listened to the man he was in love with fuck someone else, he was acutely aware that this was one of the few times he missed the sex. 

The night was already pretty much a wash anyway, so for as long as he could stand it, just so that he could get through his, Gerard let his eyes slide closed and replaced the image of the French guy with himself. Let himself imagine how it would feel to have Frank’s hands on him, tattooed fingers splayed wide on his skin, calluses brushing gently. Thought about perching over his lap, tilting his face up and seeing his eyes heavy with desire. His lips on Gerard’s neck, sucking in a bruise, leaving it warm and wet and undeniable, right at the lip of his collar, oh God, _oh God_ , for everyone else to see. Not touching himself was using up all of the self-control he could muster. And to touch himself while thinking of Frank, while hearing Frank like this, was so unbelievably over the line of masturbation that was okay that he couldn’t even begin to explain it. 

He felt drunk on the thoughts, so he kept going because it was half-nostalgic in a sick kind of way to feel like this. All the tiny little ways he’d wanted Frank since they’d met came flooding back. Now Gerard was thinking about his hands. For weeks after they’d met he’d kept thinking about them, the way the tattoos moved and shifted with the muscle underneath, how clever and careful they were. He imagined how it would feel to have them inside him, pressing up, with the other hand carefully wrapped around his hip, keeping him steady and moving him as slowly as they could both stand it. Frank’s voice floated in from the other room and Gerard pretended he was talking to him: “Like that, oh _fuck,_ like that.” He could listen to the way he bit off the _f_ in fuck for hours -- it was so much dirtier like this, so much different, even though they all probably said it a hundred times a day. 

When Gerard finally let himself think about Frank fucking him, the entire lower half of his body made this weird spasm-y sort of motion, and his hips actually lifted off the bed. It was more than just the simple fact that he was physically aroused; it was the thought of that kind of closeness with him that was shorting out Gerard’s brain. Of getting to know his body more intimately than anyone else. It wasn’t exactly that Gerard thought sex was always the big thing most Catholics made it out to be. He certainly wasn’t crying over a lack of adherence to teen abstinence and he didn’t think premarital sex was a ticket to hell. Quite frankly, the Church had much more to be concerned about. But to have sex with somene you loved was beautiful, or at least he assumed it would be, if it made people feel the way he was feeling now, without a single touch from another person. There was a reason it was part of a sacrament. 

The rest of Gerard’s train of thought came in shuttering images, like he was watching it through a View-Master. Sticking his tongue out to taste the sweat rolling down Frank’s neck. His lip caught between Frank’s teeth, a sharp sting of pain. The sticky press of their foreheads together, breath intermingling, how it would taste to hear him say “I love y--” 

The bed ceased its movement abruptly, and there was a choir of gasps, rising together in pitch and freneticism, that dissolved into ragged breathing. Gerard knew it was over, and only now did his ears start ringing, the knowledge of what he’d done washing his skin and turning it ice-cold. His time was up. The real world rushed back to the surface, and he almost sobbed at the loss, like Frank was really pulling away from him. 

He didn’t, though. Instead, he laid in bed and reached deep inside himself for the tricks he’d learned to turn off his feelings, his desires. He hated using them and he hating thinking about it but he did it anyway, because lying alone in the silence after sex was a kind of painful he wasn’t used to, and he just couldn’t do it. He’d already been so weak tonight that one more weakness wasn’t going to make or break him. 

Gerard waited for maybe 30 minutes, feeling every second-hand tick, and then got up and padded to the bathroom, exaggerating a sleep-heavy gait. He pissed and splashed water on his face but he didn’t look in the mirror. The adrenaline had faded away and now he was just tired again, achy from being so tense and from whatever-the-fuck-else was wrong. Tomorrow after Mass he could go to Confession and let all of this off his chest. He couldn’t take the Eucharist but it wouldn’t be the first time, he would survive. Right now all he needed was to fucking sleep, and even if his brain was still going on the edges of his consciousness, where he’d pushed it away, his body was giving out. He laid down and closed his eyes, and thank God, sleep came rushing up to meet him. 

Sun was streaming through the windows, over the wick of a candle lit on the windowsill, and Mikey was on the end of the bed, the curtain drawn open. Gerard pushed himself up on an elbow and rubbed his eyes at the light. “Time ‘s it?” 

“Not too late.” Mikey was looking out the window, flipping his phone and then shutting it again. 

The sound was echoing in the room weirdly, and Gerard realized it was empty. “Where’s Frank?” And was he alone? 

“I don’t know. Not here.” Now Mikey turned to him, sober-faced, even more than usual. “Gerard, I need to tell you something.” 

“What?” Gerard asked, shaking the sleep out of his head to no avail. 

“Do you think you’re ready?” Mikey asked, and he was so serious it almost made Gerard laugh, except at the same time it wasn’t funny at all. 

“Ready? Ready for -- what?” 

“I think something’s gonna happen,” he said quietly. “Something’s not right, Gee.” 

“Something always isn’t right, Mikey, that’s why we’re here in the first place.” 

“I don’t think that those visions or whatever are really why we’re here. I think it’s going to be something worse. Something harder.” 

“Then what’s it going to be?” Gerard asked, going numb with fear, picturing blood, all of the worst things they’d seen in the past months. 

As if in answer to his question, the opened curtains went up in a wall of flame, sending a flare of orange light out. Gerard swore and flung an arm in front of Mikey on instinct as the fire crackled, starting to char the ceiling. “What the hell?” 

“I think that’s something,” Mikey said mildly. 

“What the _fuck_ is it with all the fire?” Gerard asked, half to the sky and half to himself. 

“I don’t know,” Mikey shrugged. “It’s your dream.” 

“My what?” Gerard asked, his voice squeaking. 

“Your dream.” Mikey was acting as if this was the most normal thing in the world, as if characters in Gerard’s dreams regularly were aware of their status. 

“Why do you _know_ that?” 

“Because I was sitting on your bed, and I knew I had to tell you something. And I knew it was a dream because the candle wasn’t burning down, and this fire isn’t real, either.” And he got up from the bed and walked towards it. 

The world slowed to a molasses crawl, and Gerard heard himself scream as he launched himself towards his brother. They collided, hitting the floor, and as they fell, Gerard thought how weird it was that Mikey didn’t feel hot at all, even though the fire was inches from him, even though he could feel it licking up his legs. The pain followed that split second of revelation, blacking out every other thought in his head. 

Then he jolted upright with a gasp in his bed, the sheets more tangible beneath his touch, the warmth of the sun on his skin. 

Gerard felt a bit as if he’d been put inside a glass jar and shaken really hard. His breathing was ragged, and his eyes took a second to focus. When he looked around the room, he saw that there really was a candle burning on the windowsill, and he almost tripped on the covers getting up to blow it out. 

The sound of his feet hitting the floor elicited a moan from the room next door -- not the same kind of moans that had been echoing out last night. This one was pure hangover, pained, drawn-out, ending in a gurgling noise. Even though it was different, Gerard could tell it came from Frank, and as he passed on his way to the bathroom, he could see beneath the curtain to the floor: one pair of shoes, one pair of pants crumpled on the ground. The guy had left at some point. It was probably sick to feel happy about that, but the only other emotion bubbling up inside him, the only other thing he could possibly fathom feeling, was… 

Anger. He knew it, felt it burning on the back of his tongue, even though it made him ashamed to acknowledge it. Gerard would give anything to have the freedom so accessible to make this kind of choice, to be able to stop worrying about serving more than one master and just live. And Frank was wasting it on a guy whose name he barely knew. When Gerard was practically bleeding in front of him, heart split open for what felt like everyone to see. And it’s not like he had a choice but Frank could at least have the decency to pretend that he wasn’t fully fucking aware -- 

_Fuck that_ , he thought in a bitter rush all the way down his spine, and clomped back to his bed as loudly as he could. 

Predictably, as he passed, Frank whimpered at the noise. The curtain swung slightly, and Gerard could see him sprawled across the bed, just in his underwear and t-shirt, arm slung over his eyes. Gerard remembered that feeling well. 

Because he remembered it, he drew the blinds open as he walked into his quote-unquote room, just to add a little extra painful stimulus to the hangover headache. 

It was a while after that, once Frank had rolled out of bed at the insistent blare of his alarm and stumbled greenly to the bathroom, once the anger had already turned back to impotent regret, that Mikey came in, knocking gently on the wall of Gerard’s room. 

It was all Gerard could do not to crush him to his chest and make sure he really was all right. His dream had seemed so fucking real, and it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility… “Hey, Mikes, did you have any weird dreams last night?” 

This time, Mikey did give him a weird look from under his hair, and Gerard had never been happier to see it. “No. Why?” 

“I dunno. Forget about it.” Gerard waved a hand, and for anyone else, Mikey probably wouldn’t have let it go, but he knew he would for Gerard. “What’s up?” 

Hesitantly, Mikey sat down on the end of the bed, a little further down from where Gerard had sat to put his shoes on -- he’d gotten halfway through, was still holding the other one when Mikey came in. “Gee, I need to ask you. About Frank. Last night at the club, I saw how you...” 

And Gerard could read it in his face, the question on his lips, his stomach dropping horribly. “You don’t have to ask,” he said, forcing the words out through a leaden tongue. “You know.” 

Mikey went so perfectly still that Gerard thought he might have even stopped breathing. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I know.” 

They sat there for a few seconds, letting it soak in, the fact that it was finally out there, really and truly, before Mikey spoke again. “Gerard, he--” 

“Mikey, stop.” Gerard flinched. “I can’t, I don’t, please don’t tell me that. Don’t tell me anything.” He was twisting the covers between his fingers anxiously, half-unaware that he was doing it. 

“Okay, I won’t,” Mikey said immediately. 

Gerard knew Mikey wanted to, but he couldn’t stand to hear it either way, the very thought making him heady with panic. “It’ll just make things worse.” 

“I know,” Mikey said, and reached out, scooting closer on the bed, wrapping a long skinny arm around Gerard. “But you’re hurting, Gee.” 

“Is it obvious?” Gerard asked, curling a little bit around where Mikey sat. 

“I can tell.” 

“But you know me.” 

“Sometimes, I don’t know, it’s like.” Mikey bowed his head to his chest, ran his fingers along the seam of his jeans. “When you’re with him… you shine. I mean you’re always shining a little, you’re just that kind of person. But he talks to you and you go incandescent.” 

Gerard bit his lip until he tasted blood, and then finally gave in, tears squeezing hotly from the corner of his eyes, his nose thick and stuffed up. “Sometimes,” he said, and it hurt to say it, so he muffled it in his sleeve, “it feels like God gave me eyes just so I could look at him.” 

Mikey didn’t say anything, just rubbed Gerard’s back as it shook, a warm hand grounding him. They stayed like that for a while. 

They all met in the hallway at nine-thirty, some looking significant worse for wear than the others -- Ray seemed more or less normal, but Brian’s hair was all sticking up on one side, like he’d just rolled out of bed, and Bob was green enough in the face that he appeared to be wearing Halloween makeup. 

Over the sound of Ray clicking his tongue and pulling out a comb to smooth Brian’s hair down, Gerard looked around; the only person missing was Frank, who by his own experience had barely been a functioning human an hour ago. “Anyone seen Frank?” 

“I think he’s in the bathroom trying to wash out the smell of like thirty beers,” Bob said. 

“I’m here, nobody get your panties in a twist,” Frank said from the doorway. His shirt was hopelessly wrinkled and he had bags under his eyes as big as Gerard had ever seen them, but he was upright, and that would have to be good enough. 

“Okay. Father Paquet sent me a church that has English services,” Gerard said, squinting at the text he’d gotten an hour ago. “And the address of his church. It’s not too far away, I’ll walk to confession after if anyone wants to come along.” 

“I’ll go,” Brian said, as everyone else coughed or looked around awkwardly. 

Mikey fidgeted with his sleeve in a way that told Gerard he was trying not to say something. “What, Mikey?” Gerard asked. 

“He won’t tell you, but he doesn’t like that priest,” Frank said. At the murderous look Mikey shot him, he shrugged. “Hey. I trust you, you’ve got your whole intuition thing going on.” 

“I appreciate your guys’ concern,” Gerard said, resisting the urge to sigh. “But I’ve been talking to this guy for a long time, okay? He’s on our side, he’s trying to help people in his congregation.” 

“Look, I know you like the guy.” Frank raised his hands. “I get it. But you of all people should know not to trust someone just because they’re wearing a collar.” 

“I of all people?” Gerard could hear his voice rise at the end of it, but it couldn’t be stopped, a burst of irritation coming forward to cover the deeper way that dug at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“Just forget it, Gee, come on,” Mikey said, cutting another look at Frank, who did appear at least a little chastened. “We’re all just a little on edge, we always are before we start.” 

“Yeah, I think it’d be good if you guys went,” Ray piped up. “There’s like, this apothecary-type shop in the same neighborhood? I was Googling it last night. They might have some really useful stuff.” 

Trust Ray to cut the tension and remind them all of why they were really there. “That sounds great. Look for some vetiver if they’ve got it, okay? I was reading this one book that said it might help with easing disorientation, you know, like when people are coming out of channeling or whatever.” 

Ray nodded. “I’ve already got it on my list,” he said, wiggling his phone illustratively. 

“All right. Thank God for Ray Toro. Then if we’re all ready let’s--” Gerard cut himself off with a squeak as Frank reached up to scratch his neck, pulling his collar down and revealing a cluster of hickeys that completely enveloped the scorpion tattoo there. 

“What?” Frank said, nonplussed. 

Jealousy wrapped around Gerard’s stomach and squeezed, making him want to hurl the croissant he’d scarfed down in the lobby. “You couldn’t have at least tried to cover that up?” 

“Oh yeah, sure, let me just pull some costume makeup out of my ass.” Frank rolled his eyes. “Don’t be a prude.” 

Gerard reached inside his jacket instinctively and grabbed for his rosary. Something had to ground him. He wanted to say _You could be a little less obvious about the fact that this doesn’t matter to you,_ he wanted to say _If you could stop fucking flaunting this it would make life a hell of a lot easier for me,_ he wanted to say a lot of things. But instead he closed his mouth, thumbed over the carvings on the cross, and took a deep breath before speaking. “I don’t want to fight with you about this, Frankie.” 

“So then don’t.” His voice was flat, and he conspicuously swerved out of the way of Gerard’s shoulder as he walked through the group and started to go down the stairs. 

If Mass was usually awkward with their combination of atheists, agnostics, and full Catholics, not to mention the various tattoos and piercings that tended to stick out like a sore thumb, it was worse that morning. Frank sat all the way on the other side of the pew from Gerard, and when Brian was the only one to go up and take the Eucharist, he looked at Gerard with his heavy-lidded hazel eyes, unreadable in the soft, colored lighting streaming through the stained-glass windows. 

Gerard turned and fixed his gaze on the crucifix behind the altar, pretended he couldn’t feel the weight of judgment there. 

Afterwards, they all filed out to smoke and figure out where they were going. Gerard flicked the few drops of holy water from the bénitier off his fingers and lit up, pulling his phone out with his other hand to check for messages from the Cardinal. There wasn’t anything, and as he snapped his phone shut he heard footsteps. Gerard blew out his lungful of smoke. “I think they have lunch at this church if you want to do that instead of paying.” 

“Uh, that’s not really up to me.” 

It was Frank, his own cigarette clutched between his fingers, other hand jammed in his pocket. Leaning against the rough stone of the cathedral’s walls, probably standing here for hundreds of years before either of them were born, his head bowed, he could almost be praying. 

“Frankie,” Gerard said. “Sorry. I-- I thought you were Brian.” 

Frank shrugged and ashed his cig onto the ground. “S’okay.” 

They stood quietly for a few seconds, the only sound the barely-there crackle of paper burning, before Gerard’s inner shame won out and he looked down at the steps. “I’m sorry about this morning.” 

Frank sighed. “Look, I know I could be a little nicer about your job sometimes. I know, and I’m sorry. But Jesus, do you have to act like I’m the fuckin’ whore of Babylon or whatever? It’s not like I sleep around all the time.” 

“And even if you _did,_ it wouldn’t be any of my business,” Gerard blurted, waving his arm a little more wildly than he intended. “God wouldn’t love you any less, I wouldn’t think any less of you.” 

Looking him up and down, Frank pushed off the wall with his shoulder, eyebrow raised. “You sure? ‘Cause it didn’t seem that way earlier.” 

“I’m sure,” Gerard said, and tried to put the weight he felt into it. 

Frank took a long drag of his cigarette and blew the smoke out through his nose, then met Gerard’s eyes. “Why do you do this? And don’t just give me that bullshit answer about being ‘called’ or whatever, I wanna know what you mean when you say that.” 

Gerard’s mouth filled with the taste of ash, and he chewed on the inside of his cheek for a second before sitting down on the step of the church. “Here,” he said, patting the stone next to him, and Frank got down, holding his cigarette aloft as he did, like he was trying to keep it above water in a sinking ship or something. 

When they were both on the same level, when Gerard had an excuse to look out into the distance instead of right into Frank’s face, it was a little easier. “The Catechism says that ‘Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God,’” he began. “He’s Divine; we aren’t. There are, there are no words in any language on Earth that could fully convey the meaning He brings to the world.” 

Frank was silent, squinting into the midday sun, so Gerard went on. “I think actions work better than words to do that. I mean, I can talk about this until I go hoarse, you know that--” and that got him a half-smile-- “but I want to actually make a difference in someone’s life. Like God made a difference in mine.” 

Gerard pressed the tips of his fingers together till they went white. “When I say I was fucked up before this, Frankie… I mean I wasn’t really ever sober. Alcohol was what I liked best but I did drugs, too, basically anything that would keep me from thinking.” 

Frank turned his cigarette between his fingers. “Did Mikey know?” 

“I don’t know how much he knew. He definitely… he knew I wasn’t doing good. When our grandma died, that was probably the worst of it.” Gerard shut his eyes, remembering the blurry passage of time, between vodka and gin and whatever else he could get someone to leave for him at the basement door, cycling through his friends when one of them would finally stand up to him and cut him off. Light shuttering in the blinds, but he didn’t know if it was the moon or the sun. He’d worn the same clothes for weeks on end… 

“I eventually, you know, I had to get out of that, because I had a job to start, but it wasn’t any better there.” Gerard folded his hands together and propped his elbows on his knees, bringing his hands to his forehead. “I just spent all my money on alcohol and rent, every moment I wasn’t at work I was drunk. I started going to this church that had dinners in the basement, you know, because it was free. And one night a Sister came up to me and said the Father wanted to talk to me. I thought, honestly, I thought they were gonna kick me out.” Gerard laughed, even though it wasn’t funny. “But they didn’t, Frankie, they helped me.” He unlaced his fingers and rested his chin on his hands. “They completely went against every idea I thought I had about the Church.” 

Frank was staring down like he was trying to bore a hole in the flagstones of the courtyard as he dropped his cigarette butt and ground it out, but he still wasn’t saying anything. Gerard could tell he was listening, though, by the way the muscles in his cheeks jumped when he tightened his jaw, by the way there was a shadow cast over his eyes. At some point he’d gotten to know Frank so well he could never forget things -- if they stopped speaking tomorrow and Gerard didn’t see him for twenty years, he’d still be able to read the cues on his face, in his body. Like everything, it hurt and helped in equal measure, living in that little space in his chest that glowed every time he thought about Frank. 

“I knew that I wanted to be that for other people. And when I was a youth minister, I got to do that.” 

“I asked you why you didn’t just do social work or something,” Frank said quietly. “You said you sometimes got to do that. But like, what, it’s better because it was ‘in the name of the Lord’?” He puffed out his chest and made a sign of the cross in the air in front of him. 

“Not exactly,” Gerard sighed. “It was because I could change what that meant for people. So it wouldn’t just be, oh, this dude is doing this because he has to, but it would be that I was doing it because it’s what God would do.” 

“Like that priest did for you.” 

“Yeah.” 

“But they don’t even let you do that anymore.” There was a thread of anger in Frank’s voice. “Why the fuck would you keep following them, man?” 

Gerard pushed his hand through his hair and swallowed roughly. “I just… I wasn’t going to.” It came out quiet, almost a whisper. “I thought I might leave. After what happened at my church, I didn’t… I really didn’t think I could keep going.” 

“Gerard.” Frank was looking at him now, Gerard could feel it, the warmth on the side of his face, but he couldn’t look back, it was too much. The way he said his name, so soft, could make him cry. “Why did you have to leave?” 

He closed his eyes. “There was this girl named Nicole.” And it made him smile just to think of her, her sunny grin when she was happy, the way she’d looked when he hugged her on his last day. That was how he wanted to remember her. “She… so you know how what you say in Confession, the priest isn’t supposed to tell anyone, right?” 

“Even if someone’s in danger,” Frank nodded. 

“Yeah. It’s called the Sacramental Seal, it’s a whole legal thing. Well, she came to Confession one day, and you know, she was a _kid_. Kids don’t… they don’t really come to confession that often, usually. And Nicole, I mean, she was never the at-risk kind, I never had to work to reach her, you know?” Gerard reached for his rosary again, and since it was just Frank with him, he pulled it out, looping it over his head. “She started crying. Even before she said anything to me.” He clenched his fist until he could feel the designs on the beads cut into his skin. “It was one of the hardest Confessions I’ve ever had to sit through, Frankie, I… _fuck_ , it was awful.” 

Shaky, through his nose, he took a deep breath. “She told me that she came from the gas station, where she’d bought a pregnancy test. It came out positive.” Gerard still couldn’t open his eyes. For some reason, even though he’d had to recount the story multiple times now, it was harder to tell it to Frank. Or not harder, but it felt fresh again, like he was still sitting in that booth, hearing Nicole’s voice shake, trying not to puke or break something. “Because she’d been raped by her uncle. And she thought… She wanted…” He could feel his throat practically closing up, his breath speeding up. “She thought she was on her way to hell. For one mortal sin or another.” 

“Hey.” There was a scuffling sound and warmth at Gerard’s side. “You don’t… Gerard, you don’t have to tell me.” 

“I want to. I want to,” Gerard said, and tried to stop himself from tipping fully into hyperventilation. He could hear Frank beside him, breathing deep too, in and out, and for some reason it wasn’t surprising to feel a second hand close over the beads of the rosary, over his own fingers. 

With Frank’s breath in his ear, slowing his own, Gerard could feel himself calm down the smallest amount. “So the Church has official policies in cases like this. And I mean, the official policies are pretty fucking clear on abortion. But they’re clear on suicide, too. And this was exactly what I was talking about when I said I wanted to change things, when I said I wanted to act like Jesus instead of just talk about Him. Because He isn’t the church official who’s sitting up in the Vatican in like, councils and shit. God is on the streets with us, He’s the hungry, the naked, the sick, the poor. The teenager sitting in an abortion clinic, alone.” 

“So I went with her,” Gerard continued. “I couldn’t let her be alone, and I couldn’t lie to her and tell her that God wanted her to be forced into -- whatever kind of fucked-up situation would happen after that.” 

Frank was so, so still next to him. The only indication that he wanted Gerard to go on was the tiniest squeeze of his hand around the rosary. 

“And so her parents found out. It was the deepest shit I’ve ever been in in my life. I got yelled at by them for not telling them about Nicole even though I would be excommunicated, upon the action of telling them, and I got yelled at by the bishop and the cardinal and everyone else on the planet for enabling mortal sin.” Gerard pressed the heel of his free hand into his other eye. It came away wet, he could feel it on his skin. “And it’s a miracle I didn’t lose my priesthood, honestly.” 

“Yeah, I’m not sure I’d call that a fuckin’ miracle,” Frank muttered, but he didn’t pull away. 

“But if there’s even a chance,” Gerard said, and he opened his eyes finally, blinked away the tears that had gathered there as best he could. “If there’s even a _chance_ I could help someone else like I helped Nicole, I told myself, I would stay a priest. Before I met you, before I started doing this, I don’t know. I thought maybe there wasn’t, and I was just deluding myself.” He looked down at his lap, at Frank’s fingers over his own and the rosary between them, tangled up. For one burning second, every part of him ached so hard he could barely breathe. 

“I don’t know about acting like Jesus,” Frank said. “But we’re helping people.” 

“We are,” Gerard smiled. When he looked over at Frank, he saw that his eyes were rimmed with red. “I knew you knew it.” 

“Yeah.” Frank screwed his mouth over to one side, but didn’t manage to totally cover his smile. “I mean, shit. I’d be dead without you.” 

Gerard didn’t need to say anything. They’d spent enough time talking about that before, but Frank only brought it up when he meant it, and that was how Gerard knew that he understood. 

For the next few minutes, they sat there on the cathedral steps, twined together around the rosary. Gerard kept telling himself he’d get up, he’d let go, but he didn’t, he was too stuck on the sensation of Frank around him, the beads anchoring them together. He could feel the butterfly beat of Frank’s pulse on the back of his hand. 

Eventually Frank spoke. “Don’t you have to go to Confession?” he asked softly. Now his eyes were closed, his eyelashes casting spiky little shadows on his cheeks. 

“Shit. Yeah,” Gerard agreed, and summoned all of his strength to extricate himself, to wind the rosary back up and put it in his pocket, to stand on legs that fell asleep twenty mintues ago. 

Frank looked up at him, and the sun hit his face from the side. “Thanks,” he said. “For telling me.” 

Gerard bit his lip. “It’s the best way I know to say what I meant.” 

Frank shook his head. “You didn’t have to, anyway, but you did.” He paused, shielded his eyes with a hand. “What happened to her? Nicole?” 

“Oh, she’s doing great,” Gerard said, relief spilling out into his chest. “Yeah, she moved away, her uncle got put in jail, thank God. She’s… I guess she’d be a freshman in college now. Wow.” 

“Making a difference,” Frank said, hopping to his feet. His eyes crinkled at Gerard, though he hadn’t fully smiled. 

“I can’t take credit for that. She’s a great kid.” 

“She sounds like it. And it was good that she had you.” 

Gerard had to look away. _You go incandescent_ , Mikey had said to him. He felt like that now, like he was lit from the inside out. “Thank you.” 

They found the others in a cafe across the street, sipping on coffees, Euro coins flat on the table before them. “Don’t get too used to this, Mikeyway,” Ray was saying dubiously as they walked up. “You can’t drink espresso like this every morning in America.” 

“Yes I can,” Mikey said. “We could get an espresso machine for the shop and I could drink it while you do my hair and everything would be perfect.” 

“Yeah, except we don’t own the shop anymore,” Bob interjected. 

Ray had gone red in the face around the time Mikey had described his hair skills as perfect, but he took this opportunity to relax a little and shake his head. “Yeah. Don’t think an espresso machine would fit in the van.” 

“Those things cost like a thousand dollars, you’re all out of your minds,” Brian said. 

Everyone else dissolved into squabbling about various coffee-related enterprises, including Frank, and Mikey caught Gerard’s eye. With the tiniest movement, he nodded his head towards everyone else, then raised one eyebrow. _I covered for you. I can’t keep doing it._

Gerard shook his head, his mouth set firmly. _You won’t have to. I promise._ Mikey looked doubtful, like he didn’t really believe that, because he was smart and he knew Gerard. 

He slid back into the conversation, turning away from Mikey. Ray was trying to explain something, using lots of technical motions with his hands -- maybe the inner workings of a coffee machine and why they couldn’t be plugged into 12-volt car sockets. Gerard felt a little better, a little more cleaned-out on the inside, after talking to Frank and getting them back on the same footing again. But he still couldn’t shake the guilt of last night, crawling up the back of his neck, whispering in his ear. _Selfish._

It hurt worse because he knew it was true. 

Suddenly, Gerard was itching to go to Confession. He didn’t often feel like that, just because he made a point of going whenever he could. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t the same way little kids felt when they told their parents they’d done something bad; it wasn’t like you waited until you absolutely couldn’t stand it anymore and told someone just to relieve the guilt. God didn’t need the conduit of a priest to know you did something bad. He saw you do it. What He needed was the proof that you were trying to do better, to be better. Obviously you felt bad for doing whatever you were confessing to, but the want to live up to God’s expectations, to make yourself worthy of His love, was what was called perfect contrition. 

Perfect or not, it still fucking hurt. Gerard wanted to talk to a priest, to complete the sacramental process, as soon as he could, and thankfully it was nearing one, and that was when Father Paquet had said he would hear Confession and Gerard could come. His church was called Notre Dame de Lumiere, Our Lady of Light -- it had been stamped in the corner of every letter he’d sent Gerard over the past few weeks. There was no address on the stationery, but the one he’d texted Gerard this morning -- he said he’d gotten a cell phone for this occasion only, every other time they’d communicated was through letters -- was only a few blocks away. 

The conversation going on around him had lapsed into a lull, as everyone drained the last of their coffee. Gerard cleared his throat and stuck a thumb in his belt loop, shifting his weight. “Brian, are you still interested in coming to Confession?” 

“Yeah, sure,” Brian yawned, tipping his chair back and scrubbing a palm over his slightly stubbly chin. “He’ll do it in English, right?” 

“Oh, yeah, of course.” 

“Thank God.” He shuddered as he extinguished his cigarette in the ashtray and stood up, stretching, his shirt coming untucked from his pants. “My French can get us by, but I don’t think it really covers the Sacraments.” 

“Mine’s even worse, so don’t worry,” Gerard grimaced sympathetically. “Ray, you know where you’re going, right?” 

“Uh-huh. Or at least Mikey can get us there,” he confirmed, pointing at Mikey’s phone. “I’ll be probably at least an hour, since I couldn’t bring my kit with me. I wanna buy just some basic stuff, a little of it all to have on hand. We could leave it with Father Paquet when we’re done. It doesn’t hurt to have some herbal protection, even if we take care of everything nasty.” 

“Okay. I’ll call you guys once we’re done, let you know where to meet us. Sounds like we might need to be doing a house call or two,” Gerard said. “Oh, before I forget.” Rifling through his bag, he pulled out his notebook and handed it to Mikey. 

“Oh, wow, am I finally getting this back?” 

“Only for a little bit. I just wanted to let you guys look through it, it’s all the notes I took about this. I mean it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, I think it’s probably just visions being caused by something in the church -- maybe there was some kind of excavation done? I think I wrote down in there that the Father said there was construction…” Gerard trailed off and closed his eyes briefly, refocusing, trying to stop his train of thought from derailing completely. “Anyway. Just in case Ray wants to check it over and see if he needs anything specific.” 

“Thanks,” Ray said, and, taking the file of letters and the notebook from Mikey, proceeded to engross himself in it so deeply that his nose was almost touching the page. “Dude, this smells weird,” he remarked absently. “You must have gotten something on it from when I was cleaning out my stores the other week.” 

“Frank said that too,” Gerard frowned. “I don’t think it’s bad, guys, honestly.” _And if it is, I’m sure it’s just because we all live inside a tiny van and barely shower,_ he added bitterly to himself. 

As soon as the notebook was out of his hands, Mikey shot Gerard another look. This one was a lot less readable than usual, and Gerard just frowned, quizzical, at his brother. Mikey raised a hand to his mouth and chewed on the side of his nail, a habit he picked up from Gerard. He shook his head the tiniest amount from side to side. _Forget it._

Gerard didn’t stop frowning, but he pursed his lips a little bit at Mikey. This made him look like their mom, which he was well aware of, but it was still the best way to convey _Okay, but I know there’s something you’re not telling me_ without talking. She was a master at that. 

Mikey just repeated his head-shake, and when he got like this, there was no point in trying to reason with him. It was kind of stressing Gerard out, because there wasn’t a lot Mikey didn’t tell him, but an hour apart would probably be enough for either Gerard to figure it out or for Mikey to think more about it. And when Gerard really considered it, that was probably all it was; Mikey just might not know how to say what he wanted to say yet. That was okay, because he’d get there eventually. He’d tell them what he was thinking, and -- 

Gerard really had to stop overthinking stuff like this. 

He turned on his heel and gestured to Brian, who loped over to stand by him. “I’ve got my phone, okay? If you guys need anything, just text me. And I’ll call you once I’m done.” 

“I think we’ll be okay,” Bob said, raising an eyebrow. “This is, like, a city. It’s not like when we had to go in that creepy church in the middle of the cornfield in Nebraska, or driving through the mountains or whatever. There’s a street plan.” 

“I don’t know,” Frank said thoughtfully. “We can be pretty big dumbasses sometimes.” He cracked a grin when Bob shoved him. 

“I have faith in you,” Gerard said, picking up his bag and slinging it back over his shoulders. “You have the easiest job in the world right now. Just do what Ray tells you and stay out of trouble.” 

“Hey, I thought I was the one who got to be in charge when you and Brian are gone,” Bob complained. 

“It should really be me,” Mikey insisted, leaning closer in even as Ray scoffed and got ready to defend himself. 

Gerard cut his eyes at Brian, who smiled with one side of his mouth, and they both walked away as their friends dissolved into their argument. 

The walk wasn’t long, but Gerard’s phone kept glitching out as he tried to get it to direct him to the address. The streets were getting increasingly narrower, paved with stones instead of asphalt, divots in the middle running into drains. The buildings seemed to be closing in on them, leaning just a little too far over the street, like they could collapse in at any time, so it was a relief when the path finally opened up into a little square. There was a courtyard with grass growing all between the cobbles, a few parking blocks at odd angles sprouting from the curb, and the church, all grey and dismal even in the afternoon sunlight. Beneath the layer of yellowish pebbled glass on the outside of the windows, there was stained glass, hidden away but still visible, and there were ornaments all around the tympanum and the doors that were stained and eroded from acid rain. It was clearly underloved, and it broke Gerard’s heart to see it. 

The doors were littered with strips of tape where signs had been posted and replaced. There was only one up there now, a sheet of notebook paper in Father Paquet’s neat handwriting, reading “Sacrament du Confession: 13h-14h.” When Gerard placed a hand flat on the door beneath it and pushed, firmly, it opened with a creak. 

The inside was somehow worse than the outside. Dust filtered in through the door and in the little light that was able to pierce through the double-thick layer of glass, and everywhere Gerard looked, there were translucent tarps; half-covering peeling paintings on the wall that once were magnificent, draped over statues, giving them ghostly bodies. The altars ringing the room seemed lifeless, the crosses within them dull and all speckled with tarnish. Even the bénitier was empty of holy water when Gerard and Brian dipped their fingers inside to try and cross themselves. 

“Damn,” Brian said softly. “I thought the National Basilica was too much, but I’d take that over this place any-fucking-day. Gives me the creeps.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah. I grew up in one of those 50s-style churches, you know, with the low ceilings and everything. There’s too much space in here. I don’t know.” Brian shivered. It was pretty cold; Gerard usually liked that, how you could step off the busiest street in a city into a cathedral and find a peaceful, quiet, cool place to think. 

“It doesn’t scare me,” Gerard said, tilting his face up towards the roof. He couldn’t see that far in detail, but he imagined that if he could, he’d see fuzzy swaths of cobwebs, wrapped around and around the arches. “It just makes me sad. A beautiful place like this… they probably have a really small congregation.” 

“Well, yeah, I’d guess. We seem to be the only ones who thought it was worth showing up to Confession,” Brian said. 

“Saying Mass in here must be lonely.” Gerard thought of Father Paquet, all dressed up in his robes and everything, speaking to a few people scattered through the pews, and was almost bowled over by that strange, sad feeling again. He shook his head, like a dog trying to get a fly off of him, but it didn’t work, the melancholy had settled in deep again. Which was annoying, because Gerard would still rather say Mass for a tiny congregation -- he’d rather say it for only one person -- than do what he was doing now, which was not saying it at all. 

They stepped in past the threshold, and Gerard let his arm fall away from the door. It closed with a _thunk_ , and then it was _really_ dark inside, enough that Gerard could feel his heart start up an anxious tattoo against his ribs. On instinct, he looked towards the altar, and flinched at what he saw. The crucifix was big and it was garish, a lifelike painted wooden statue of Jesus hung by hooks on a gilt cross, one of the ones Gerard hated even before he saw what those wounds looked like in real life. 

“That’s some Children of the Corn shit,” Brian muttered, and it made Gerard laugh and relax a little. 

“Yeah. No accounting for taste when you inherit a church this old, I guess.” He sighed and dropped his bag on the last pew. “I’ll go first, for Confession, okay? If you don’t mind just waiting by yourself?” 

Brian shrugged. “No problem. It’s creepy, but you know, it’s still a church. There’s probably some altars to some cool saints or whatever.” 

Gerard beamed at Brian. At least someone understood how to behave in a church without complaining about how boring it was every two seconds. “Exactly.” 

The confessional was situated in a small alcove. In its matching place across the sanctuary there was another, but this one had the door propped open, so Gerard knew it was the one they were meant to go in. He stepped inside, ducking under the low wooden ceiling, and knelt on the floor, the screen in front of him, a curtain behind it on the priest’s side. The tiny room was filled with incense smoke, that same smell that had been on Father Paquet’s clothes at the Louvre, so strong it was surprising that it wasn’t coming out from under the doors. 

Gerard dipped his hand under his collar for the gold chain of his cross with one hand and crossed himself with the other, then pressed a kiss to his necklace. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been…” He paused for a few seconds, counting. “Five days since my last confession.” He dropped the cross back behind his collar, and folded his hands in front of him, closing his eyes. 

“What are your sins, my son?” Father Paquet’s voice came back from behind the curtain, calm and slightly muffled. 

“I’ve… envied. Wanted things that I know I can’t have, that I know would come between me and God.” Gerard was dancing around the subject, mostly because he didn’t want to entertain any further questioning about lust, but he would get there eventually. He just had to warm up first. “I’ve entertained impure thoughts. I’ve wanted for money, wished for more of it, and also had thoughts of, um, a sexual nature.” 

There wasn’t a response from the booth next door, which was okay. Not everyone made it a back-and-forth kind of thing. But Gerard couldn’t resist the temptation to crack an eye open. There was some kind of orange light glowing behind Paquet, maybe an amber window on the other side of the confessional, throwing his profile on the curtain. 

“Go on, my child,” he said, and Gerard could see his mouth move, so he closed his eyes again. 

“I’ve been tempted. By so many things. Earthly things, that I know wouldn’t be what God wanted for me.” He licked his lips and bowed his head a little more, feeling his first two knuckles press into his forehead, his crossed thumbs into the space between his eyebrows. “I’ve lusted. For someone I can’t have, for sex outside of marriage. For pleasures of the flesh, and not of the spirit. I’ve wanted it so badly I could hardly breathe with it.” 

An image of Frank floated into Gerard’s head, and he tried to push him away, but he stayed there, smiling a little crookedly, and Gerard made a frustrated noise. 

“What is it?” 

“I just -- I’ve just been so torn lately, Father. I thought I knew the path that God wanted me to walk.” Gerard swallowed, thinking back to saving Frank, watching him go limp and still on the table. His head was thick with memories, with confusion, and he couldn’t tell if it was nerves or guilt or what but it was stuffy in here, in sharp contrast to the cold interior of the church. “But now -- I just don’t know.” The smoke seemed to be getting denser, somehow, and it wasn’t exactly helping Gerard parse through the tangled knot of feelings that felt like it was stuck in his throat. “I want to help people. And I thought that God wanted that for me too. Maybe He… He wants me to do it differently? I don’t think I can do it on my own,” he admitted quietly. 

There was a creaking of wood from the priest’s booth, though Gerard kept his eyes shut tightly. “My child,” Paquet said. His voice sounded far away. “The quote by St. Jeanne. You know it. It would do you good to remember it, in times like these. She said, ‘I am not afraid. I was born to do this.’ God knows you were born to do this.” 

“I thought I was too,” Gerard said, and then coughed, he couldn’t hold it back. “Father, I’m sorry, is there any way you could move that censer outside of the booth? It’s getting really smoky in here.” 

The only answer was the sound of the curtain pulling back on its little metal hooks. Gerard tried to keep his eyes closed, he tried to stay focused on the confession, because it was going well, but something in him that sounded an awful lot like Mikey told him to raise his head, to let his eyes fall open. Before he even opened them, he could feel the warmth on his face, could see the bright light, far brighter than it had been before, bursting through the skin of his eyelids. 

Father Paquet was lit from behind and below and all around by a fire so bright Gerard didn’t understand how he possibly could have not seen it, even through the curtain and the screen. He was so incredibly calm, smiling even, wearing almost the exact same expression he’d been wearing when they met yesterday. “What censer?” 

“That’s not incense,” Gerard whispered, his face going slack, his breath coming faster and faster through his nose even as he tried to hold it. 

“It’s not,” the Father agreed. “What is it that you see, Father Way? Or, no, do not tell me, let me look in your eyes.” 

Gerard’s head was spinning. He couldn’t have gotten away -- even if he wasn’t rooted to the spot like one of so many statues littering this decrepit church, frozen with terror, his limbs felt heavy, too much so to be used for running. Paquet leaned in so close that Gerard felt his breath on his face through the wide rattan weave of the screen. “Do you see the flames?” he asked. “ _Do not be afraid_.” 

“Holy God,” Gerard said, horrified, almost a prayer, though he could barely think to start one. There were tears welling up in the corners of his eyes from the smoke, and when he reached up automatically to wipe them away, his fingers came away red. _I’m crying blood_ , he thought distantly. A drop, too viscous to be water, rolled down his cheek and landed on the wooden sill of the confessional. “Help me,” he tried to say, he tried to shout to Brian, but it hardly made any noise at all, just air rushing over his lips, his throat working in vain. 

“I am helping you,” Paquet said, and the curtain slid shut, and Gerard fell forwards into a world of darkening smoke. 

* 

It wasn’t so much the feeling of liquid splashing on him and soaking his clothes as much as it was the acrid tang in his nostrils that brought Gerard out from whatever spinning, half-hallucinatory slumber he’d been lulled to. He wrinkled his nose and tried on instinct to cover it, but his hands wouldn’t move, they were meeting some kind of resistance. Feeling was slowly seeping back into his body, and he realized they were tied behind his back, around -- around something. Something wooden, ramrod-straight and pressing against his back from his shoulders to his ankles. He kicked those experimentally, found they were free, but his shins were poked by more something, built up in a wall about midway up his legs. 

“I see you are with me once more.” It was Father Paquet’s voice, and Gerard opened his eyes to see him standing at the intersection of the aisles of the church. He was holding a red plastic gallon container in his hands, the lid lying on the floor next to him, and on the top of the steps up to the altar, in front of where Gerard was, Brian was lying prone on the floor, his whole body bound together like a mummy, tied at the shoulders and waist and all down his legs. His eyes were closed, but he was breathing, his chest rising and falling around the strain of the ropes. 

With a creeping feeling of dread, Gerard looked around himself as best he could while tied to whatever it was. He was upright, at the front of the church, the frightening crucifix almost visible out of the top of his eyes if he rolled them back really hard. At his feet there was a pile of sticks, varying in size from tiny little twigs to branches thicker than Gerard’s arms, reaching up to knee-height so he couldn’t kick them out of the way. They were all dark with liquid, which didn’t really make sense until Gerard put the smell together and moaned in horror, yanking on his hands again even though it didn’t do anything but cut the ropes into his wrists. 

It was gasoline. 

Paquet wanted to burn him. 

_Okay. Okay._ Gerard wanted to pace, to run his hands through his hair, he wanted his books, but it turned out all of that was impossible when you were tied to a _motherfucking pyre_. There had to be some way out of this, something he could do -- 

Paquet was doing something, crouching down on the floor, putting down the gas canister and picking up some little bundle of herbs instead. He had a lighter in his other hand. 

“What are you doing?” Gerard called, his throat scratchy and raw but his voice traveling okay. His cheeks were tight from the dried blood that was covering them. 

“Belladonna,” Paquet said, almost casually, as he plucked a single flower out of the bouquet and tossed the rest on the ground. “It has hallucinatory properties. Your friend is not the only one who knows how to use herbs.” 

_Fuck. Okay._ Well, at least Gerard knew he wasn’t going crazy. “Why do you need me to hallucinate?” 

“It does not just cause hallucinations, but visions.” Paquet turned his face back towards Gerard. “You needed to see the fate in store for you.” 

“In store for me by who?” 

“By me. By God. By everyone who knows that what you are doing, running around and solving God’s problems with magic and incantations--” Now for the first time, Paquet’s face broke from placidity into a scowl -- “is against the laws of nature. Is heresy. In my letters to you I described a situation serious enough that it should have been taken care of by those who are truly qualified, not those who wear the name of God while doing things that should be met with the most severe punishment possible. Yet as I knew you would, you came here to do what? To say some words and burn some plants. To pretend you can convey the will of God like this. Someone needed to stop you from turning the entire Church against itself like an ouroboros, consuming itself, lost in sin after sin in the pursuit of a ‘new solution.’” He sneered deeply, fists clenching. 

“Not according to the Cardinal!” Gerard argued, letting his voice pitch louder, hoping Paquet would respond in turn. If he could wake Brian up, it would be two against one. 

“You would be surprised at what some in the Vatican think of this little experiment!” Paquet snapped back, his face only growing darker and uglier. “Those of us who are enlightened know that it is people like _you_ who invade our Church and tempt us to leave behind Scripture. It is people like you who spread lies about sin and about salvation, who are the reason so many have turned away from the Church. It is no wonder that I had so much ease in luring you here; others who think the same way are on my side.” 

Brian’s eyes jumped beneath his lids, and his eyelashes fluttered. 

“I don’t care what some people think,” Gerard shouted, “I care what God thinks, and I know I’m doing the right thing!” 

“You do not know the first thing about what is right or wrong!” Paquet bellowed, and Brian startled awake, his whole body wriggling under the ropes. 

“Jesus, my head hurts.” He took in the scene, his eyes roving first over Gerard strapped to the stake, then over Paquet, red in the face, screaming. “What the fuck,” he said. 

“Welcome back, Brian,” Gerard said. It felt a million times better to hear someone else’s voice, to know that he wasn’t completely alone. 

“Seriously, what the _fuck_.” With a groan and impressive use of ab muscles, Brian sat up. 

“And you had to bring someone else here,” Paquet groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “As if any of your so-called friends are believers enough to take a Sacrament. I thought they all were atheists.” 

Brian’s chin dropped in indignation. “Hey, I went to CCD and got confirmed and went to Confession just like everyone else in my town, motherfucker.” 

“Yet you’ve just blasphemed in my church,” Paquet retorted. 

This was also good because as long as Paquet was talking, he wasn’t doing anything else. “Listen,” Gerard said desperately, straining against his bonds, trying to buy time. If he could just work one hand free... “This is all based in theology.” 

“Theology. Pah.” Paquet waved his hand dismissively. “This is what you tell yourself. It is simply nonsense from old, dusty books that should have been burned.” 

“We’re saving people.” 

“ _God_ ,” Paquet said, “is saving people. You are merely getting in His way.” 

“God relies on His messengers here on Earth to do His work,” Gerard argued. His fingers scrabbled against the wood of the pyre, searching for any loose point in the ropes. 

“That is why I am here.” 

“Do you really, seriously believe that? Look around yourself, look at what you’re _doing--_ ” 

“Here is the problem,” Paquet said, pinched and annoyed, like Gerard was a kid who was misbehaving at Sunday school instead of someone he was trying to fucking martyr. “You talk and you talk and you talk. And yet somehow you never say what you mean.” And before Gerard could say anything else, before he could keep Paquet talking, the lighter caught the end of the dry stalk of belladonna and it started to smoke. 

“Brian, don’t breathe it in,” Gerard yelled, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Brian duck his chin low, under the collar of his t-shirt, to cover his nose and mouth. But in that quick second the smoke traveled up and wound its way into Gerard’s head again, close, suffocating. 

He blinked, and when he opened his eyes, it was like his mind was being cleaved in two, like he was seeing the real world and something else overlaid atop it, something far more terrifying. Walls of fire leaping up the side of the church, always the fire, coming back to him and back to him like it knew his name. Like it knew his very heart. 

Suddenly he knew the feeling that had been sneaking into his head for the past few days, with a thunderous clap of recognition. It was resignation. Acceptance of his death, with flames licking his feet, smoke spiraling above him high into the spire of this godforsaken church and out into the sky. And he felt tears, blood again, bitter with regret and shame, on his cheeks, because even after how he’d been prepared, for all the times he’d drank himself to sleep and not cared if he’d woke up, for all he’d claimed to want to be like Joan of Arc in her unmovable strength, here was the truth: _he didn’t want to die._

It was getting harder and harder to fight against the smell that was inching its way into his brain, and what Gerard knew was real, the firm stone foundations of the church, seemed all shivery and hazy. The more he blinked, the less he could see of them, and the greater the feeling grew in his chest. He stopped tugging at the ropes, stopped trying to escape, because it was pointless, wasn’t it? This was it, it was over, no matter how much he wanted it to go on. He had to do something, if it was going to go like this. If he really couldn’t stop it. 

“If I let you do this,” Gerard said, and willed his voice not to shake, “will you let him go?” He jerked his chin at Brian, who was struggling against his bonds still. The ropes were turning red where his wrists had started to bleed from the chafing, leaving small tracks against the cracked white floor. It only made Gerard more sure that he’d have to do this, because for the rest of his life when he saw someone bleed from their wrists like that, he’d think of Frank. He couldn’t think of Frank now, except in the abstract, as someone he needed to save, someone who made him both weaker than he’d ever been and stronger than he thought possible. 

“They aren’t anything to be concerned about without you,” Paquet said carelessly. “You are the one who gives these ideas to the Church, who whispers in their ear like the serpent in the garden. So yes.” 

Brian looked incredulously at Gerard. “You don’t seriously believe him.” 

“Lying is a sin,” Gerard said dully. “So I do.” 

“Mother _fuck_ , you’re crazy,” Brian said to Paquet. 

“And Jeanne d’Arc was not?” For someone claiming his own sanity Paquet sure had that gleam in his eye that usually told Gerard someone had lost all contact with reality. “Nor Francis of Assisi? Yet they were claimed as saints.” 

“Usually the saints are the ones getting martyred, not doing the killing,” Brian replied. 

Gerard wanted to talk back, to try and keep himself aware and stop slipping away. As he opened his mouth, though, a bang resounded, so loud it echoed through the empty church like a gunshot, and a band of white sunlight sluiced across the floor. 

Ray, Bob, Mikey, and Frank were standing in the aisle, in front of all the pews, somehow. They must have come in a side entrance. Their arms were full of paper bags, but taking in the scene, Mikey promptly dropped his on the floor. “I fucking knew it,” he hissed. 

Ray didn’t waste a second, just reached into his bag and started searching for something. Frank dumped his bag, too, and started racing for Paquet, but the priest just raised a hand smoothly and dangled his lighter down like it was a pendulum and he was trying to hypnotize Frank. 

“Stop,” Gerard managed to pant, and when he blinked, he saw that other world again, his hearing almost totally drowned out by the roaring sounds of fire. Bob was yelling, and Paquet was responding, he could hear that, but the words were lost-- 

A fresh breeze cut through, the air from outside making its way into the dusty church from where the door had been left open, and Gerard gasped it in. His head cleared. 

“It’s the smoke,” Brian shouted, muffled through the fabric of his shirt. “It’s doing something to the F— to Gerard. You gotta stop him burning that shit.” 

“I’m gonna stop him burning anything,” Ray said tensely. Mikey was hunched over him, and Frank was still frozen in the middle of the aisle. 

“You will not be able to stop anything,” Paquet said smugly. 

What happened next was so fast that Gerard could barely follow it. Ray tossed a little packet of something tied up in a burlap square to Frank, who caught it and started running like a starting gun had gone off. Paquet’s expression didn’t change -- if anything, his smile got the tiniest bit wider as he held the lighter to the end of the rest of his bundle of belladonna and then tossed the whole flaming thing onto the pyre. 

The sticks toward the outside lit up first, and Gerard reached inward, tried to search for peace, that peace that saints always had in the paintings. He was going to die without anyone saying the Anointing of the Sick for him, and even though he really didn’t want to die sad, that was what was bothering him more than anyone else in this tiny moment. 

But it turned out to be a thought he didn’t have much time to entertain, because Frank was running up the steps, past Paquet, who Bob was grabbing, past the fire like it was fucking nothing, his eyes trained on Gerard. He dropped the bundle that Ray had given him into the center of the fire and it blew outwards like the aftermath of a spaceship launch, and he kept running and jumped and caught Gerard around the waist, him and the stake, knocking them all over. Gerard’s shoulder crushed against the marble and then his head hit it, ringing with pain, and he blacked out again. 

“Gerard.” Frank was holding him, holding his head in his lap. He must have only been out for a few seconds. There was fire all around them, leaping up the altar and over the fucked-up crucifix, real this time, but nothing touched them, a circle surrounding them where Ray’s spell had exploded, even though the gasoline was wet and shining on the floor. 

“Nnnh,” Gerard tried to say, but his head was ringing from where it had made sharp smacking contact with the marble, and it made it hard to move his tongue. The burning belladonna smoke was more difficult to ignore than ever, because there was at least five times as much of it, swirling in with the rest of the fire, and the way the flames had come up around them blocked any hope of fresh air blowing it away. 

“Shhh.” Frank was white in the face, and his hands were moving over Gerard’s body, pressing. When he made contact with Gerard’s shoulder, Gerard heard himself whine like an animal, shuddering, pain branching out and into his arm, and Frank pulled away as fast as he could. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he whispered. The other hand, which was somewhere on Gerard’s torso, started to shake. 

In a huge shower of sparks, the pile of sticks fell halfway, and Frank swore under his breath and hunched over Gerard’s body. Behind him, past the fire, Gerard could see the other guys, urgently talking, surrounding Ray, who was kneeling on the floor over some pouches and bags. But beyond them, there seemed to be hundreds of others, far more than the church could ever hold, watching, just watching. They were too close to the fire, their faces either covered by helmets or wavering with heat mirages. Gerard practically smelled them burning already, just like he was going to. Or would have. He couldn’t now that Frank was holding him. Right? Maybe the smell was just the belladonna. It felt like it was everywhere, invading his mind, clouding him up. 

“You gotta stay with me here,” Frank said, and even through the fog, Gerard could tell that he was desperate, he could hear it grinding in his voice. He was crying, but his tears were clear, normal. 

Gerard was crying too, and from the way it felt thick as it dripped out of the sides of his eyes and trickled back into his hair, he could tell it was still blood. All there was was here, the entire rest of the Earth must have faded away. He cried out, strangled, panting; he felt so much it was like being torn in two, a desire to be here, with Frank and Mikey and Ray and Bob and Brian, and a desire to give in, to let the flames just take him, and let this run its course like it was always going to. 

“What, what’s wrong?” Frank asked, frantic. 

All Gerard could think of was a string of words, something he must have read what felt like a lifetime ago, a line that was so literal now it was almost funny. “In the church of my heart,” he slurred, trying so hard to focus on Frank’s face even as it slid in and out of his field of view, “the choir’s in flames." 

“You’re not making sense,” Frank told him, and rubbed his thumb under Gerard’s eye, cleaning up the pool of blood that was gathering there. In the midst of all of this, everything that was happening, the chaos surrounding them, the touch was so gentle. 

“But you know what I mean,” Gerard whispered. If he closed his eyes, he could ignore everything but Frank. And that wouldn’t be such a bad way to go. “You always know.” 

Frank’s hand felt over Gerard’s neck for the string of his rosary and pulled it out, pressed it to his mouth, his forehead. Gerard moaned at the touch, pushing his head back, his throat exposed, trying to get more; it was cool on his skin, around the sweat and the feverish flush, almost too much to bear. 

Down far away, Mikey was holding a book, one he must have dug out of Gerard’s bag, and he was reading out of it. His Latin was stuttering and awkward, but he was trying, and pride swelled fiercely in Gerard’s chest, even through the double vision of the belladonna. “ _In nomine Patris, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti, amen_ ,” Mikey began, loud enough to be heard over everything else — sparks crackling, Paquet and Bob screaming at each other. 

“Amen,” Frank repeated, his eyes not moving away. Still fixed on Gerard’s face. Gerard went breathless with it. He wasn’t sure he could be strong after all. He wasn’t sure he could not tell Frank, he could feel it rising up in his throat, after all this time, when anyway, he was going to— 

“Banishing unholy fire, unholy fire,” Mikey muttered, running his fingers along the page. “Gee said this book had ‘like everything’ in a pinch but he didn’t say it would be so fucking hard to find.” 

Frank turned his head around. “Is this even unholy fire?” he yelled. 

“It’s not gonna hurt!” Mikey hollered back. “Found it. Okay, um, um, _Linguae flammae, operatur non ex Deo, sed est diaboli, sileant et ego vobis in nomine Domini. Fiat pax et sanctum finem tibi iram in hac Tellure. Amen_. Ray, do it!” 

There was a huge crash, and then a quieting, and the pyre died and Ray and Mikey came clambering over it. The walls were still burning, but no one really seemed to be worried about that. “Here,” Ray panted, holding out a stick of incense to Frank. “Light this and make him smell it.” 

Gerard realized belatedly that they were talking about him, and had to try and bring himself back to his body. Frank’s hands were so tight on him that he practically had to pry them off to take the incense from Ray and light it, but he did, holding it under Gerard’s nose, the other hand coming up behind to cradle his head. It still hurt like a motherfucker, but it felt better to have Frank hold him, and the incense smelled like a meadow. The opposite of the close, constricting belladonna. 

His eyes slid shut, and when he opened them again, the church was solid and real. No more supernatural flames, no more angel choir waiting to watch him die. Just an old stone building. And even the walls were dying down now, Ray was walking around and sprinkling something at the floor that seemed to be doing the trick. 

“I— I think I’m okay now,” Gerard said hesitantly. 

Frank laughed and blew out the incense, then pulled Gerard up and into a hug so quickly that it made his head spin. “You motherfucker,” he whispered tightly against Gerard’s ear. The word had never sounded less like an insult. “I knew there was something wrong with you.” 

“That’s not the first time you’ve said that,” Gerard managed, smiling wonkily. 

Frank only held him harder. “I never wanna see you like this again,” he said. “Don’t cry blood, it’s fucking freaky.” 

“I’m sorry,” Gerard said. He knew what it was like to be on the other side of this and he wouldn’t wish it on anyone. He was shaking, he realized, his hands clutching weakly in the back of Frank’s shirt. Behind his ear, Frank’s breath was stirring his hair. He gave up trying to move or regain control of his own body and just let himself slump into the hug, adrenaline draining out of him, Frank’s arms keeping him upright. 

Mikey’s face appeared over Frank’s shoulder, void of all color, and Gerard immediately forgot about everything else. “Mikey, I’m so sorry.” 

“I knew there was something you weren’t telling me,” Mikey said, his voice higher than usual. He crouched down on the floor next to Frank, who seemed to get the message and let Gerard carefully down into Mikey’s arms instead. 

“I didn’t think it was worth saying anything,” Gerard mumbled, pressing his face into the crook of Mikey’s neck. His hair was too long, curling at the nape in a way Gerard knew Mikey hated. “It wasn’t related to why we came here.” 

“It turned out to be the _reason_ we came here in the end,” Mikey said. Under his nose, Gerard could feel Mikey’s skinny shoulders trembling. He pulled back a little, careful to keep Gerard sitting up and avoid his shoulder. “No more lying to each other. Ignoring this stuff, it just, it never works out.” 

“No more,” Gerard agreed. With his good arm, he splayed his fingers across Mikey’s back and drew him close as he could. 

“I think the only way this works is if we tell each other stuff like that,” Mikey said. “And listen.” 

Gerard nodded as best he could with his face smushed into Mikey’s shoulder. “Yeah. Yeah.” 

Mikey was quiet for a second, then rushed out a sobbing breath and tightened his hold. “God, Gee, I thought you were gonna jump into that fire.” 

“I almost did,” he said. “I really… I just don’t know. Frank’s the one with the martyr complex.” 

“Hey,” Frank said, and tried to frown, but relief was etched too deep in his face for him to overcome it. 

“So let’s just not split up like this again,” Ray suggested. There was soot on his face, streaked across his nose and cheekbones in a line where he must have wiped a hand across. Tear tracks cut through it, little clean areas. “If we don’t know what’s going on, let’s just stay together.” He managed a smile. “We work best like that, anyway.” 

“We really do,” Gerard said fervently. “Listen, I — guys, I’m so sorry.” Shame was back, prickling at his neck. “If I hadn’t been so proud, so convinced I was right—” 

“Don’t,” Frank interrupted. He reached out, almost like he was going to brush hair from Gerard’s eye, then caught Mikey’s gaze and let his hand fall. “Gerard, just don’t. We all do stupid shit, okay? And this guy, I mean, he was determined to get you alone. If that’s what he really wanted, he was gonna find a way no matter what, and honestly, that way could have been a lot fucking worse.” 

“I don’t want to be okay with ‘it could have been worse,’” Gerard said fretfully. He tried to push himself up, but his shoulder screamed in pain, and his arm buckled, sending him back down onto Mikey’s lap. 

“That’s pretty much the definition of our lives, Father,” Brian called from the other side of the burnt sticks that were dividing the altar in half. Thanks to the area where they’d collapsed due to Ray’s spell, Gerard could see that Bob had cut him free, and he was now sitting hunched over on the top step, rubbing feeling back into his ankles. 

“He’s right,” Mikey said quietly. “Gee, you can’t beat yourself up over this. It’s not gonna be the last time you make a mistake.” 

“I’m not supposed to be the one who makes mistakes,” Gerard sighed. His head was so heavy, and he let it loll sideways into Mikey’s hand. 

“Why is he passing out again?” Frank said, alarmed. 

“It might be, uh, coming down from the belladonna,” Ray said thoughtfully. “It’s really powerful, it like, binds itself to your brain and when it’s gone, you feel like shit. I actually noticed it in this guy’s letters to Gerard, you know, they all smelled the same. It must have been the belladonna. I didn’t even know to look for it, obviously, but it makes sense now. It’s been weeks that this guy was doing this to him.” 

“And of course we got the mail and all,” Frank gritted out. His fingers flew to his wrists, though he probably didn’t know he was even doing it. “The fucking Vatican. They’re so good at fucking up our lives, they should make it part of their official job description.” 

Gerard laughed, and it hurt his chest from the smoke inhalation. When he breathed in, his lungs filled with air -- it had started to rain outside, he could smell it coming off the pavement, clear and sweet. It smelled like safety, like he always imagined Heaven would smell. 

* 

Gerard could only remember a couple times in his life when he was higher than this. It was like his pain was on a whole different planet, like his shoulder and head belonged to someone else, and he was just watching them hurt from afar. 

Frank was sitting in the chair next to the bed. He was almost dozing off, his chin planted in his palm, but when he saw Gerard’s eyes flutter open he started forward. “Hey. You’re awake.” 

“Yeah,” Gerard agreed dreamily. 

A grin split Frank’s face, and it looked good, even among the day or so of stubble and the tiredness clearly written there. “Dude, you’re so stoned right now.” 

“I feel good,” Gerard said. He was aware he sounded vacant, but it was so nice to be drifting away from his injuries that he wasn’t really concerned. 

He’d called the Cardinal on the way from the church to the hospital, braced between Frank and Mikey so the car didn’t shake him around too much. To his credit, the Cardinal had sounded incredibly apologetic and abashed, but once he heard that Gerard had been injured, he didn’t really want to be talking on the phone with him, insisting they could chat once he’d been patched up. Frank started yelling about how _incredibly fucking convenient that was, huh, your Eminence_ , and then Gerard had been forced to hang up anyway. Once he got into the hospital things started getting hazy in his memory; he remembered being put in his room but not much other than that, except hearing nurses talking in hushed voices, maybe Brian yelling once or twice, the words “extreme exhaustion” and “blood loss” and “dehydration” being thrown around. None of it could really pierce through to worry him right now. 

There was one thing bothering him, though, and he knew it was important, so he furrowed his brows until the words came. “Mikey! Where’s Mikey?” 

“He’s fine. He’s back at the hostel. It’s pretty late, dude, it’s like three in the morning.” 

“Is Brian okay?” 

“Yeah, they bandaged him up, he’s fine.” Frank was jiggling his leg, his sneaker squeaking on the linoleum floor. “Everyone’s okay except you.” 

“What’s wrong with me?” Gerard asked, and it came out plaintive, sad. 

“Actually, not all that much. You’re one lucky dude,” Frank said. “You landed on your shoulder but that pretty much broke your fall. All you did was dislocate it. And you’ve got a pretty big egg on the back of your head, but no concussion. Somehow.” 

“Not just luck,” Gerard said, absently reached for a rosary that wasn’t there. 

“Oh, I got it,” Frank said, a little sheepish, and pulled the rosary out from under his shirt and over his head. He pressed it into Gerard’s hand. It was still warm from his skin. 

Gerard ran it through his fingers like water, watching the beads fall until the last trace of Frank’s body heat was gone. Then he looked up. “Frankie...” 

“I was coming to get you,” Frank said quietly. “You were taking a really long time, and I just — I think it’s bullshit you were fucking out there torturing yourself for something, God knows what, it probably wasn’t even that bad, and yeah, I’m a stubborn motherfucker.” 

“You saved my life,” Gerard said, and it managed to mostly not be slurred. “Brian’s too.” 

“Well.” Frank scratched the back of his head. “Guess I shouldn’t stop being stubborn no matter what Bob says, huh?” 

“Not when you know you’re doing the right thing,” Gerard said. He reached out, still clutching the rosary, and touched Frank’s hand. “You ran through the fire. Right through it. You didn’t know…." He couldn’t find the words to say what that meant, but he kept replaying the moment behind his eyes. An arm reaching through the wall of flame to come save him. Like something out of a dream. A prayer answered. 

The only indication that Frank noticed anything was him folding his lips in a tight line. For one brief second, he covered Gerard’s hand with his other one, before he let go of them both and got up. His voice was quiet when he spoke. “Hey, they’re gonna be in to check on you soon... you’re supposed to be asleep.” 

“I’m supposed to be a lot of things,” Gerard whispered back. He was half-in and half-out at this point, Frank’s face the only clear thing as the room swam in dizzying waves. 

Frank leaned in, and Gerard thought for a second he was just going to adjust the blanket before he felt lips press to his forehead, then the callused pads of fingertips. A benediction, if he didn’t know better. 

The warmth left and Frank walked back over to the hoodie he’d left on the chair, picking it up. “I’m gonna go... they’ll be in in a little bit, okay? And I’ll send Mikey when he gets back.” 

Gerard nodded. His head, his limbs, were laden down, pressing him into the pillows. 

“Do you need anything else?” Frank asked. 

They looked at each other for a second. Gerard wanted to ask him how long he’d been sitting by the bed. He wanted to ask if Frank had been in his dreams like Mikey was. He wanted to tell him to stay and keep him anchored to the world the way his face had when Gerard was seeing tongues of flame and the faces of angels. 

His mouth wouldn’t work, his tongue leaden, and he could feel his eyelids dropping shut against his will, even as he struggled. “Frankie—“ Gerard managed. 

“Don’t fight it,” Frank said, and from what Gerard could see, he looked amused. “Just sleep, okay? For once in your life. We’ll all be here when you wake up. I promise.” 

Gerard believed him, but it didn’t really matter, because he was falling asleep again anyway. 

* 

The airport was crowded and bright and it hurt Gerard’s still-tender head just a little as they pushed through the crowds. His arm was strapped to his chest in a sling to keep it from putting strain on his shoulder, and he was bruised all up his side and back -- it was honestly a miracle that he’d been allowed to leave the hospital, but apparently there was no end to what could be accomplished by the Suits. 

They’d come in the second day he’d spent in the hospital. It was really weird to just have everything relayed to him instead of being there for when they bagged Paquet, but it seemed like everything had gone pretty well. Bob had managed to tie Paquet up good and tight with the curtain ties, of all things, and well, it was a cut-and-dry case from there. They assured him that they were in the process of finding whatever allies Paquet claimed to have in the Church, which made Frank roll his eyes so hard that Gerard thought they might fall out of his head. But he held his tongue, somehow, and they managed to get the Suits out of there in under thirty minutes, which seriously had to be some kind of world record. 

All Gerard wanted now was to go back to America. Not like he was any big fan of it or anything, but he wanted to be back to how everything was before, where they were helping other people. He was even looking forward to being back in the van, and he was sure that made him some level of legally brain-damaged. 

“Here’s our gate,” Gerard said, pausing to frown at the boarding passes. Behind him, Bob stopped short, almost falling over with both his and Gerard’s bags slung over his shoulders. Mikey was looking at his Sidekick and walked directly into Bob’s back, bouncing off like in a cartoon or something, then looking up, dumbstruck. Ray shook his head, then squawked in protest, because paying attention to his surroundings wouldn’t stop Frank from jumping onto his back, cackling loudly. 

Brian watched this all happen from a few feet away, looking almost impressed at their continued dumbassery, and Gerard couldn’t keep the smile off of his face as they met eyes. They all crammed into the tiny waiting area, among various bags and carry-ons, and Frank fit himself into the seat next to Gerard. “I know you’ll want it back for the flight,” he said, “but can I borrow, um, the rosary?” 

Gerard blinked. He’d honestly forgotten that Frank had given it back to him in the hospital, but he reached into his pocket, under his scarf, and found it there. “Oh! Of course you can, Frankie,” he said, and passed it over. 

“Thanks.” Frank slotted the beads between his fingers, staring down at the tiny carvings. 

“You know,” Gerard said hesitantly, “you could get one of your own. If you wanted.” 

“No, man, I don’t want a different one,” Frank mumbled, drawing the necklace almost against his lips. “It’s -- I like this one. Because it’s y--” He swallowed dryly. “Because of how it makes you feel. I can see it on your face when you pray with it. It kind of… I feel like that too, sometimes. Not from praying, just from holding it. Counting.” His face went red, and he unclasped his hand, holding it back to Gerard. “You can have it back if you want it, need it, whatever, I’m sorry.” 

“No, no, Frank, that’s not what I meant at all,” Gerard said hurriedly. “I don’t mind.” He closed Frank’s hand back over the rosary and tried not to let his touch linger, tried to ignore the way his whole body felt warmer just from brushing Frank’s skin, like the contact had somehow gotten into his bloodstream. “I really don’t. I just thought you might be sick of sharing.” 

“I’m not,” Frank said quietly. 

They looked together out the window, at the way the sun was starting to set over the endless tarmac. 

“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep this time? Since you’re not, like, poisoned anymore?” 

Gerard chewed on his thumbnail, pensieve, unsure, but eventually said what he was thinking, because it was Frank, and it felt like he would know anyway. “I don’t know. Probably not. I’m kind of… I’ve been sort of scared of sleeping.” 

“Nightmares?” 

“None yet.” He sighed and took his hand away from his mouth, twining the end of his scarf around his fingers instead. “I’m just scared I’ll dream about it again.” 

“I know that feeling,” Frank said, bumping his shoes together. 

“I just want this all to be over,” Gerard said, with a raw edge to it that even surprised him. “I don’t want it to happen again.” 

“Gee.” He looked up to see Frank staring at him, serious. “It won’t.” 

“But you don’t know that.” He fought to keep his voice from rising. 

Frank slumped back in his seat. “Yeah. I don’t. But you don’t know that I’m not gonna start stigmata-ing again tomorrow, either, right? We don’t know _any_ of this shit for sure. We just have to trust that we’re doing the right thing, ‘cause none of us are dead yet.” 

Gerard clicked his tongue, smiled. “The same could kind of be said for believing in God, you know.” 

Another eye-roll from Frank. “Jesus Christ. You got a one-track mind.” 

“Do you hate me because I tell you the truth?” Gerard quoted loftily. 

All there was in response was a snort, and then Frank lapsed into silence. Mikey and Bob were poring over some French magazine someone had left on the seat, Brian was flipping through everyone’s passports for the fiftieth time, and Ray was looking at a few pictures on his cell phone. Every couple moments, Frank’s elbow would bump him as he made his way around the necklace, and it wasn’t annoying, it was good, it was a reminder that his life was still here, that he had people and he wasn’t alone the way he’d felt in that church three days ago. That he had things ahead of him, that he would do more good, that he wasn’t trying in vain. 

Gerard closed his eyes and thought of all the tomorrows that would come.

**Author's Note:**

> ****  
>  _references_   
> 
> 
>   1. the title of this fic comes from this quote: _”To be loved means to be consumed. **To love means to radiate with inexhaustible light.** To be loved is to pass away, to love is to endure.”_ -Rainer Maria Rilke
>   2. the statue of joan of arc that gerard sees in the louvre [really exists](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Statues_of_Jeanne_d%27Arc#/media/File:Jeanne_d'Arc_Rude_Louvre_RF2974.jpg). it was sculpted by françois rude and in english is titled _Joan of Arc Listening to Her Voices_.
>   3. the part of the catechism that gerard references can be read [here](http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p1s1c1.htm#IV). also, if you wanted to read a little more about perfect vs imperfect contrition, you can read that part of the catechism [here](http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c2a4.htm#VII).
>   4. i found [this poem](https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/0507/Mayakovsky%2520Cloud%2520in%2520Trousers.pdf) called a cloud in trousers by vladimir mayakovsky very inspirational. this is the poem that gerard thinks to himself - "in the church of my heart, the choir is in flames." 
>   5. i often stopped just to stare at [punkeduppirate’s uhv art](%E2%80%9C), which is some of my favorite on the planet.
>   6. if you want to see more of my inspiration for this fic, you can visit my [writing tag](https://heavenhelpsus.tumblr.com/tagged/writing+tag) (which also contains my updates while i was writing) or my [more general unholyverse tag](http://heavenhelpsus.tumblr.com/tagged/uhv).
> 

> 
> thank you so much for reading!! if you liked it, please consider leaving kudos or a comment. those truly make my day, and let me know i'm not just writing into the void :,) you can also come yell at me about this fic, unholyverse, or pretty much anything on tumblr [@heavenhelpsus](https://heavenhelpsus.tumblr.com). i would love to talk with you guys!


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